The amendment involves the replacement in its entirety of section 2 of the Bill as initiated, with the heading, "Gift voucher contracts”. Acceptance of the amendment involves accordingly the deletion of section 2 of the Bill. This approach to the amendment of section 2 was taken on the advice of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel in view of the number and nature of the changes made to the section.

The great majority of the proposed amendments concern the form and not the substance of the Bill’s provisions. None of the individual amendments lessen or weaken in any way the protections contained in the Bill as initiated. The amendments in fact significantly strengthen the protections provided for in the Bill. As I have submitted a detailed briefing note to the select committee setting out the individual amendments made to section 2 and the reasons for them, I will now outline only the main amendments that are proposed.

There are three substantive additions to the Bill. The first is the proposed prohibition in section 66B(7), as proposed in section 2, on contract terms that place a limit on the number of gift vouchers that can be used in a single transaction. Where such a contract term applies, a consumer with two €100 vouchers who wishes to purchase goods or services for €200 from the business that issued the voucher would be permitted to use only one of the vouchers. A contract term of this kind is unfair and unjustified.

The second addition provides in section 66B(8), as proposed in section 2, that where a gift voucher contract provides for the replacement of a lost or stolen voucher, the replacement voucher should have the same expiry date as the original voucher. This provision will protect consumers by ensuring that an original and a replacement gift voucher will be subject to a combined expiry period of not less than five years, while clarifying for businesses that a replacement voucher will not be treated as a new voucher for the purpose of the five-year expiry date requirement.

The third substantive addition provides in section 66B(10), as proposed in section 2, for an exception to the doctrine of privity of contract, which restricts rights and obligations under a contract to the parties to the contract. As gift vouchers of their nature are normally redeemed by their recipients rather than their purchasers, it is necessary to ensure that the recipient of a voucher can exercise the same rights under the contract as its purchaser, including rights included in gift voucher contracts by this Bill.

A number of the proposed amendments have been made in response to legal advice that certain provisions of the Bill as initiated were at risk of legal challenge on the ground of incompatibility with the unfair commercial practices directive. The legal advice recommended that in order to minimise the risk of legal challenge, provisions aimed at commercial practices by traders should be redrafted so that they were aimed instead at terms in gift voucher contracts. This has been done in sections 66B(1), (4), (6) and (8), as proposed in section 2 of the Bill.

The great majority of the other amendments to the Bill are technical in nature. The definition of "gift voucher" in section 66A(1), as proposed in section 2, has been amended to exclude a number of products such as prepaid telephone and Internet cards, gas and electricity cards, diesel and petrol cards, cheques and postal orders that share some characteristics with gift vouchers and might accordingly be held to come within the definition of that term, but to which the protections of the Bill are unnecessary or would be inappropriate. Electronic money gift vouchers are also excluded from the scope of the Bill in response to legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General that its inclusion risked incompatibility with the maximum harmonisation nature of the electronic money directive, as well as conflict with the regulatory regime for electronic money. The counterparty to the trader who supplies a gift voucher under a gift voucher contract is now referred to as a "person" rather than, as in the Bill as initiated, a "consumer", in recognition of the facts that many businesses purchase vouchers to give to their employees and that these employees would not be regarded as "consumers" under the definition of that term in consumer legislation.

Other technical amendments seek to clarify aspects of the application of the provisions to which they relate in order to avoid legal uncertainty and unintended consequences. In section 66A(2)(a), as proposed in section 2, for example, the exclusion from the definition of "gift voucher" of vouchers redeemable for the purchase at a discounted price of specified goods or services for a period of limited duration now provides that this period should not exceed three months.