New legislation protecting consumers from unscrupulous trading practices such as pyramid selling, persistent "cold-calling" and making false claims about goods for sale will be in force by early next year, the Minister for Enterprise and Employment Micheál Martin has predicted.
Announcing details of the Consumer Protection (National Consumer Agency) Bill yesterday, he said the legislation would be "the first and most crucial phase of what is a root and branch review of Ireland's consumer laws".
The second phase in the autumn would include a review of the law governing consumer contracts and regulations requiring the display of prices by retailers and other traders.
The Bill, to be published this autumn, will propose outlawing and introducing tough sanctions for 31 "anti-consumer activities".
As well as pyramid selling and persistent cold-calling of citizens, these include prize draw scams, advertising targeted at children and describing a product as "free" when the consumer actually has to pay charges for it.
It also will ban so-called "advertorials" - paid for articles in the media promoting particular products which do not make it clear that they are advertising rather than editorial material.
The Bill will give legal backing to the recently established National Consumer Agency (NCA). That body incorporates the old office of the director of consumer affairs and has additional powers in areas of consumer advocacy, research, education and enforcement.
Under the terms of the Bill the agency will be able to impose on- the-spot fines for breaches of the law and initiate court proceedings against more serious offen-ders. Penalties can be as high as a €100,000 fine and two years in prison, or five years in the case of pyramid selling schemes.
Mr Martin said this would be the first major piece of consumer legislation in almost 30 years and will replace some outdated legislation. Ten older Acts will be repealed by the legislation which would be introduced in the Dáil before Christmas and in force early next year. Fine Gael and Labour welcomed the announcement insofar as it promises extra protection to consumers. But they criticised the delay in publishing it.
Fine Gael enterprise spokes- man Phil Hogan TD said the Government parties had now spent nine years and three months in office, and "the new Consumer Protection Bill which Micheál Martin has unveiled is a case of too little, too late for the hard-pressed Irish consumer". He said the most important point was that the Government had not given a commitment to keep Government-controlled prices down, and that these were the real drivers of inflation.
Labour's consumer affairs spokeswoman Kathleen Lynch broadly welcomed the measures to be contained in the Bill. "However, what we got today was not the long promised Bill, but simply a press release from Minister Martin giving a broad outline of what will be in the legislation when it is eventually published. Final judgment on the proposals will have to wait until we can see the small print of the Bill. "It also means that, given the Government's poor record in regard to the production and processing of legislation, there is little prospect of the Bill becoming law before the general election."