The newly formed Competition and Consumer Protection Commission will strengthen enforcement of competition and consumer protection law

Open and competitive markets are essential to our economic recovery. We need businesses to compete actively, and consumers who are protected and empowered to make informed choices. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (the commission), is a newly established statutory body whose mission is to make markets work better for consumers and businesses in Ireland. Ultimately, it is consumers who decide whether businesses thrive or fail, and so their needs and issues will be at the heart of everything we do.

Formed from the amalgamation of the National Consumer Agency and the Competition Authority, we have been given an economy-wide remit by the Government to enforce competition and consumer protection law. It’s a natural fit: you could say that competition law is there to make sure there are options for consumers, while consumer protection law ensures they can make informed choices among those options. The new body’s functions include promoting and protecting competition, protecting consumers from unfair or misleading practices, and promoting consumer rights and financial education.

Our enforcement powers in respect of serious competition offences, such as price-fixing or bid-rigging, have been strengthened. In addition, we will be responsible for ensuring compliance with new regulations in the grocery sector aimed at ensuring balance and predictability in the relationships among the various parties in this sector.

New merger control procedures will enable us to focus more on transactions which have an impact on competition within the State.

Goods and services

What’s also new, of course, is that we will now carry out these important functions as one organisation. Both organisations have previously focused attention on many of the same goods and services andinevitably our attention focused on different aspects.

For example with regard to medical and legal services, the National Consumer Agency worked to increase price awareness and promote price disclosure, whereas the Competition Authority identified and removed barriers to entry.

As one organisation, we will be able to take a more holistic view, harnessing the knowledge and expertise of both organisations to give us a unique overview of markets and an unparalleled insight into the behaviour and experiences of consumers in Ireland.

We are committed to using this evidence base to efficiently allocate our resources to those areas most in need of intervention, focusing on mitigating the greatest harm.

To help us do this, one of the first pieces of work the commission will publish is a comprehensive study of consumer detriment in Ireland. This will measure the money consumers have lost in unsatisfactory goods and services.

Study of harm

Consumer detriment has been studied and quantified by many organisations across the world. The most similar study was conducted by the Office of Fair Trading in the UK in 2008. This was broadly repeated by Consumer Focus in 2012 and a further study by the UK department of business, innovation and skills in 2014. Until now, however, there hasn’t been a large-scale exploration of consumer detriment in Ireland.

This study will examine the scale and the range of problems within specific sectors, and also across the whole economy, as well as estimating the monetary loss suffered by consumers.

It will enable us to understand consumer experience beyond what is reported directly to us through contacts or complaints.

Both legacy organisations have a strong track record of acting upon these contacts – indeed recently we have published details of actions concerning Ryanair and An Post which were informed by complaints we received. However, not everyone with a problem will contact us, and studies like this help us to a deeper understanding of the kinds of structural or market failure problems within markets that are hard to identify but which result in significant detriment to consumers and businesses.

We will also be shortly publishing new guidelines for SMEs, which can feel that they are locked out of bidding for public contracts because the quantities are too large or the criteria too restrictive. Our guidance will aim to help them understand, in practical terms, how they can come together to form consortiums to bid for contracts, without falling foul of competition law.

Armed with robust evidence, skilled staff and legislative powers, we firmly believe our new organisation will make a real difference and will make markets work better for consumers and businesses in the coming years.

Isolde Goggin is chairwoman of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission