12-month delay for Consumer Agency

THE new get-tough National Consumer Agency may not be up and running for another 12 months, the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment confirmed yesterday.

This means that the new agency will not have its extensive new powers to issue-on-the-spot fines and close down businesses that breach consumer laws until Autumn 2006.

The legislation to put the interim board of the National Consumer Agency on a statutory basis will have to clear all five stages of the Houses of the Oireachtas before it gets these new powers, the Department spokeswoman said.