Retailers fined for breaching pricing laws

CONSUMER rights watchdogs have slapped retailers with the first “on-the-spot” fines for failing to display prices properly.

Eight fines of €300 were issued by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) inspectors after checking prices at 40 shops across the country in the week before Christmas.

The shops were in Kilkenny, Cork, Carlow, Dublin, Galway, Clare, Kildare and Tipperary.

Yesterday, the agency revealed that only four had paid within the 28-day deadline while the other four could now face proceedings in the courts.

NCA assistant director Catherine Lenihan said: “As well as prosecuting retailers we now have powers to issue fixed-penalty notices of €300 for each infringement of the pricing display laws.

“We are not looking to catch retailers out but rather to see if there is a culture of compliance of displaying the prices of the goods.

“In the case of these first eight cases we could have imposed a fine of €300 for each infringement but have decided to issue one per retailer to see how the system works.”

The agency is also looking at publicising the names and addresses of shops which have receive fixed-penalty notices in future.

The NCA’s fixed-penalty notices work like “on-the-spot” speeding tickets handed out by gardaí, with recipients given a deadline to pay the fine or go to court.

Inspectors send out their “on-the-spot” fines in the post after visiting the shop, inspecting the prices and making themselves known to the owners.

“We’re not looking to see if retailers have failed to display the price of one item but rather if there are a range of items that have not been priced,” said Ms Lenihan.

One other shop, in Co Mayo, was also fined but has since ceased trading.

The agency is looking to prosecute the other four retailers for breaching pricing law after failing to pay the fines.

The NCA’s powers to issue “on-the-spot” fines came into force last October after Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin gave the go-ahead under the new Consumer Protection Act.

Ms Lenihan said the NCA had also sent out new “compliance notices” to two business to warn them about complying with consumer legislation.

The warnings, which are similar to yellow cards in football, went to one business about its pricing practices and to another about its advertisements.