Consumer protection - Urgent need for powerful watchdog

Consumer protection should undergo a radical change with the introduction next year of the new National Consumer Agency (NCA), which is due to have significant powers in line with a bill just published by Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin.

The NCA is currently operating as an interim body designed to be a beefed-up watchdog to replace the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs, which is currently being wound down.

The outgoing agency was essentially a toothless body that could do little more than highlight or remonstrate about sharp practices and rip-offs. Its ineffectiveness became particularly apparent as a result of the Rip-off Ireland series of Eddie Hobbs.

The new legislation, which has been approved by the Cabinet, is designed to bring consumer protection in this country up to European standards. It will give real teeth to the NCA by establishing it on a firm statutory basis with a variety of powers to protect consumers.

Those powers are designed to ensure that it will be able to put rogue traders out of business by taking them to court. It will also authorise on-the-spot fines of shopkeepers who flout pricing laws. Bodies like the Commission for Energy Regulation will have to work with the NCA before Bord Gáis or the Electricity Supply Board will be allowed to raise their prices. This should lead to serious questioning about the kind of price rises that each of those companies have sought recently.

The new legislation should ensure that consumers have a voice at the national level, as the NCA will be accorded power to deal with sharp business practices, pressure selling, and misleading advertising.

Ann Fitzgerald, Executive Chairman of the NCA, has outlined a positive approach emphasising the importance of consumer research and the need for awareness campaigns to inform consumers of their rights in order to ensure that they have an effective voice. She clearly has ambitions of changing the consumer culture of this country to an extent that could amount to a mini-revolution.

Consumers lose out on €800 million a year, because of shoddy goods and service. For too long people have had to put up with such rip-offs, because our laws did not provide proper protection for consumers, or the necessary litigation was likely to be both too expensive and too risky.

Our economy has been largely influenced by producer interests, which have essentially been allowed to control the decision making process. But informing and empowering consumers should bring about a significant change.

The Consumers’ Association of Ireland has therefore welcomed the Cabinet’s decision to approve the NCA. In fact, it has gone even further, calling for the NCA to be established urgently.

The NCA will only be effective, however, if it demonstrates that it will use it powers not only to inform and protect consumers but also in taking the lead in redressing the imbalance that has been allowed to favour the interests of producers in Irish society for far too long.

Such a lead could help to re-orientate the focus of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and should ensure that the Competition Authority will become more consumer conscious.