No one likes it when prices climb but it is doubly infuriating when you have been led to believe that you might be able to sidestep the increases only to find out that the promise was illusory, as a reader called Fintan discovered recently.
He got in touch to ask about a price hike that he has been warned is coming his way from his mobile phone provider and he notes that the Government said it was rolling out new rules to help him avoid it.
“I am just getting in touch about the [Consumer Price Index] CPI increase coming up in April for most mid-contract telecoms customers,” he writes.
“You covered this before and the Minister’s plan to introduce legislation to give power to customers to exit these contracts,” he writes.
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“I just got a notification from Three Ireland about this upcoming price hike but it appears no legislation has been actually put in place yet despite the Minister’s announcement.”
So what is Fintan talking about?
Maybe a bit of context is needed.
In the days ahead, hundreds of thousands of Irish mobile phone users will see their monthly bills jump by more than 5 per cent as a result of a policy rolled out by some of the leading providers several years ago that seems to work against our best interests.
In recent years, many of the State’s leading telecom operators, including Vodafone, Eir and Three Mobile, have linked their prices to inflation, with increases of 3 per cent plus the CPI rate of inflation rolled-out annually.
The rate of inflation that is most likely going to be used in the weeks ahead is the 2.8 per cent recorded in December and when added to the 3 per cent added on by the companies, customers will be facing hikes of 5.8 per cent.
And as Fintan says, most customers will be powerless to do anything.
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And why is that? Well, the increases form part of contracts and as a result they do not amount to a material change to the Ts&Cs which means consumers have no power to switch when price hikes are announced as had been the case previously.
The communications regulator ComReg has repeatedly expressed concern about the practice which, it said, worked against the best interests of consumers, and last November the Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan brought a memo to Cabinet that would allow people to side step the so-called “in-contract consumer price index” (ICPI) hikes.
Sources close to the Minister suggested to Pricewatch at the time that the new legislation would be in place by this coming April when many of the telecoms companies impose their annual price increases.
But the plans to allow mobile phone and broadband customers shop around for better value when providers roll out their price hikes will miss that key deadline which means hundreds of thousands of consumers likely to face higher costs as a result.
The Department of Communications has confirmed to Pricewatch that the proposed legislation has made little progress in recent months. Consumers currently locked into mobile and broadband contracts of up to 24 months will have no power to exit them when prices climb with the proposed changes unlikely to have any practical benefit for people until 2027 at the earliest.
In a statement a spokeswoman for the department said the Minister had “secured Government approval to commence the drafting of a General Scheme for legislation to address the use of in-contract price increases in November 2025.”
The statement said the legislation is “on the Spring Legislative Programme published by Government in January, and work is advancing in relation to outstanding policy and legal issues that remain to be addressed to inform the drafting of a General Scheme.”
So what does that mean when it comes to a time frame? Well, the spokeswoman said “the intention is to bring forward the draft Scheme to Government as soon as possible at which point it will be referred to the Oireachtas for Pre-Legislative Scrutiny.”
She went on to say that “thereafter the time frame for publication and enactment of a finalised Bill will be subject to any legal issues that arise and consideration by the Oireachtas but the Minister would be hopeful of enacting the legislation later this year. The Department will conduct stakeholder engagement including with the telecoms industry during the development stages of the legislation.”
