Mr. Brian McHugh:

The commission issues certain levels of guidance and so does the European Commission in some areas, for example in the setting of standards where it may be appropriate for some companies to co-ordinate when they set standards on the very live issues such as environmental standards and how they should be set across industries. There are also block exemptions, on which there is a lot of guidance around what does and does not fall within competition law. We do an amount of this and we publish, as does the European Commission, and we work with the European Commission on that.

Another element is that when we do an investigation we try to publish the investigation note by guidance to the industry on what does and does not fall within breaches of competition law. We believe it is useful to send out a message to industry. Ultimately, with the new legislation we will have new powers in areas such as the abuse of dominance. As Ms Goggin has mentioned, if a company is abusing its dominance today there is no financial punishment available from us or from the courts. This proposed legislation is a game changer for an area of competition law such as abuse of dominance. Like other countries in the EU, where the evidence is in place and where the decision is appropriate, Ireland would now be able to fine companies for those abuses.