State consumer agency faces strike threat

THE Government’s National Consumer Agency is facing the threat of strike action just weeks after becoming an official body with tough new powers.

Dublin-based civil servants are unhappy over the agency’s decision to farm out much of the work of its consumer hotline to a private Cork firm Abtran.

The hotline, set up in late 2005 when the NCA was a shadow body, handles thousands of calls a month on day-to-day queries.