Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is mention in the submission about the fact that the commission cannot investigate behaviour that is unethical and I appreciate that the commission is not the morality police. Is there a case for strengthening the law to make unethical practices illegal? I ask because it has been acknowledged in the submission that there are matters that might be unethical and that we would all consider to be wrong. I would venture to say that is what prompted people to get in contact. I wrote to the commission, as did loads of people, to complain that the price hikes are wrong and should not happen and detailed how much it cost them to fill a fuel tank last week in comparison with this week. Notwithstanding all of the global factors and issues, the price hikes did not make sense to people. What people have said to me is that the scale of the increase was wrong. Is there a case to be made to strengthen the law to make the practice illegal? The commission can only investigate something that is illegal. Something might be wrong, awful and morally abhorrent to everyone in the room but the commission can do nothing about it unless it is illegal. Can the commission extend its powers to take in some of this issue which is unethical?