3 Rules for the payment of benefits from the Fund.
1
Subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, the Authority shall make rules with respect to the application of the Fund in making payments under this Act to or for the benefit of customers of air travel organisers (hereafter in this section referred to as “benefit rules”).
(2)
The benefit rules may define particular circumstances in which losses or liabilities which are (within the meaning of section 2 above) losses or liabilities incurred by a customer of an air travel organiser in connection with a contract of any description mentioned in subsection (1) of that section are to be treated for the purposes of subsection (3)(a) of that section as incurred in consequence of the inability of the air travel organiser to meet his financial commitments under or in respect of contracts of that description; but any circumstances so defined must be circumstances of a character indicating or suggesting financial difficulties, whether in general or as affecting in particular the performance by an air travel organiser of his obligations towards his customers under contracts of that description.
3
The Agency shall not make payments out of the Fund in respect of losses or liabilities to which section 2(1) above applies except in cases where such payments are authorised by the benefit rules, which may (without prejudice to the making of any other provision thereby)—
a
prescribe the conditions which must be satisfied before any such payments may be made in any cases or classes of case in which such payments are authorised by the rules;
b
provide for determining the amount of any such payments in any such cases or classes of case; and
c
provide for the terms on which and the manner in which any such payments may be made in any such cases or classes of case.
4
It shall be the duty of the Agency to supply to any person on request, free of charge, a copy of the benefit rules for the time being in force; and the Agency may from time to time take such steps as may appear to them to be appropriate for bringing the provisions of the benefit rules to the notice of the public.