Mr. Brian McHugh:

Yes. That is exactly what happens in competition, so we now have powers to levy sanctions for breaches of competition law and we set out how we calculate them, which is about the harm to consumers and to the turnover the company, so that they are proportionate, but also they are a deterrent. If we take the Tesco case, what happened was around club card pricing.

Probably millions of Irish consumers will have been in a Tesco store looking at a Clubcard price. A big proportion of them look at the unit price so that they can make their decision on what to buy. As we know, Clubcard pricing is a big part of the Tesco business. The amount of product bought at those Clubcard prices that did not have unit prices that allowed the consumer to make the decision is a serious issue for us. That is why we took the case. The outcome of a €1,000 contribution to charity leads us to believe we need new legislation. We need better powers for consumer fines and we welcome the decision to bring those in. We look forward to coming back to the committee to discuss that legislation, hopefully next year.