Mr. Brian McHugh:

As the Deputy said, the Competition (Amendment) Act 2022 came into force in 2023 and one of the main tools it gave, which I mentioned in my opening statement, is leniency. This encourages parties to come forward with evidence and to look for leniency from us and is one of the key drivers of identifying and detecting cartels in Europe. We now have a leniency phone line and all the information is available on our website. Since we set that up, the phone is ringing. It is very early stages as the Deputy said but it has been successful. We know it has been very successful in other jurisdictions so we expect it to be successful here.

As regards our powers, for many years we have had powers to do searches or raids. That is something we always want to do where we have the evidence. We have done searches this year and we are planning further searches. We are very active in that space.

One of the points we want to made today is that the more tools we have to be able to detect cartels, the better because it is very difficult to do. For us, what today is about is following our international counterparts who have this power to screen the data. It would be another important tool to be able to find cartels, bring them to an end and punish those who have been carrying this out.