Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Regrettably, I am not in a position to accept this amendment. Under EU and Irish competition legislation, self-employed persons, including professionals who are not employees, are regarded as undertakings. There is ample evidence of EU case law in the European Court of Justice, which has determined that professionals are regarded as undertakings from an EU competition law angle.

Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002 prohibits and makes void all agreements between undertakings, decisions by bodies representing undertakings and concerted practices that have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in trade in any good or service in the State or any part thereof. This reflects the provisions of Article 101 of the treaty on the EU, previously EC treaty Article 81, which contains a similar prohibition on agreements, decisions and concerted practices that may affect trade between member states. Currently, representative bodies cannot decide on the fees paid for services provided by their members. Nor can their members agree a price between themselves for their services, as this is regarded as price fixing contrary to the 2002 Act. However, the State is not prohibited from unilaterally setting a fee that it is willing to pay for such services. Neither is it prohibited from consulting a representative body and its members as long as the State retains the power to set the price. Thus, any exemption in respect of professionals providing services to the State would have an impact on Exchequer finances. More generally, any subjugation of competition law is more than likely to result in higher prices for businesses and, ultimately, consumers, a loss of competitiveness for business and, as regards the State and taxpayers, higher costs.

As the Deputy acknowledged, a High Court case between the Competition Authority and the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, is pending and I would not like to prejudice the court proceedings.

Regarding an exemption for certain categories of workers from competition law, the EU-IMF programme for financial support for Ireland committed the Government to ensuring that no further exemptions to the competition law framework would be granted unless they were entirely consistent with the goals of the programme and the needs of the economy and were agreed in advance by the troika. No such exemptions were agreed in that context. There are no plans to introduce such exemptions, especially in light of the post-programme surveillance process that is in place. For various reasons, I am not in a position to accept the proposed amendment at this time.