Watchdog under fire over kennel probe

THE Competition Authority yesterday was portrayed as having skewered priorities, pursuing cases involving “pedigree moggies” while making insufficient inroads against major anti-competitive practices.

A member of the Dáil’s public finance watchdog singled out an investigation involving the Irish Kennel Club, questioning whether it would register with consumers as a matter of vital interest for competition.

Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan was one of several members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) who suggested the authority was not emphasising its enforcement role sufficiently, conducting investigations and initiating prosecutions against alleged anti-competitive practices in the pub and cement trades, and in the legal, medical, and auctioneering professions.

It came after the chairperson of the authority described the enormous task involved in dealing with embedded anti-competitive practices in Ireland, which some estimates put at costing the economy some €5 billion-€6 billion per annum.

Dr John Fingleton, in a statement to the PAC, said: “A legacy of Government intervention and private monopoly has left Ireland with uncompetitive sectors of the economy and a widespread culture of anti-consumer behaviour.”

He went on to say that “almost every national and international economic body has pointed to the lack of competition in Ireland as a problem for Irish consumers, Irish business and the Irish economy”.

However, Mr Noonan, PAC chairman John Perry of FG and Labour leader Pat Rabbitte implied that the authority may be concentrating to an inordinate extent on its advocacy role and conducting studies into key sectors.

Dr Fingleton strongly stood over its record in recent years, especially since the expansion of the office and the enactment of the 2002 Competition Act. He said that the agency was now fully active and effective.

Dr Fingleton said that the authority, with an annual budget of €3.6m, and total personnel of 47, allocated 50% of its resources to enforcement; 35% to advocacy; and the remaining 15% to mergers.

He said the latter category had seen a sharp increase of 80% in notifications in the past year.

In a specific response to the Kennel Club case, he argued it would be wrong for the authority not to act even in a small market like that.

Setting out the context, Dr Fingleton said the agency was working against decades and centuries of practices and behaviours that were anti-competitive.

With its current resources it is capable of conducting in a single year one full cartel investigation, a handful of mostly civil investigations, reasoned decisions on all notified mergers, and one formal study on a key sector of the economy.