Territorial Extent and Territorial Application Northern Ireland Overview of Part 2 Section 48: Membership of redress schemes: supplementary
130.Section 48 defines the key terms in relation to redress schemes.
131.Subsection (3) provides that an approved redress scheme may admit persons who are not required to belong to such a scheme and that it may investigate matters other than those to which the duty to belong to a redress scheme applies.
132.Subsection (4) provides that, for the purposes of the law of defamation, proceedings before a redress scheme will be treated in the same way as court proceedings. The effect of this is to allow the redress scheme to conduct investigations and determinations freely without the threat of defamation proceedings. Similar provision exists for most other statutory redress schemes.