Ms Clare McNamara:

I thank the Deputy for the question and I will probably share the answering of these questions with my colleague, Ms Hanrahan.

I will start with the question of enforcement. First, this legislation is going to create new rights for consumers, and, in particular, around remedies. For example, the specific remedies that are now available to consumers that were not in place before will be around the whole area of digital content and services and where a service that does not comply with the requirements of the Act, the consumer will have the right to the digital content and service free of charge while the service is brought into compliance and within a reasonable time and without any significant inconvenience to the consumer.

If that right is not complied with, the consumer can go to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC. This commission has a number of powers. It has the power, first of all, to accept a written undertaking from a trader to rectify the failure or the refusal to comply. It can issue a compliance notice to the trader, setting out the actions to be taken and it can apply to the Circuit Court or the High Court for a declaration or an injunction regarding the failure or refusal. Bear in mind that there are fines also for non-compliance under the Fines Act.

Further to enforcement, we are bringing rights that consumers have not had before by way of remedies that are available to them and we are giving the CCPC the power to pursue those rights and remedies.

I did not quite understand the Deputy’s question on the labelling of products and I am not sure if my colleague did. I might ask the Deputy to repeat that question please.

On consent, we have all been there where there are hundreds of pages to read through, particularly in the case of signing up to social media, for example, and one is agreeing to rather than reading the hundreds of pages. We would always say to consumers that they should be reading what they are signing up to. As to whether we are dealing with any of this, specifically, I will ask my colleague, Ms Hanrahan, to answer that particular question.