Ms Karen O'Leary:

As regards Senator O'Keeffe's question, I will give some history on the compliance blitz. The National Consumer Agency was established in 2007 and took over functions from the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs, plus a host of other new functions given to it by the Consumer Protection Act. At the time, there was a constant on-the-road inspectorate, which was thought to be inefficient and had less managerial oversight than it could have had. I cannot take any credit for this because I was not there. It was pulled back and we thought we needed to ensure two main objectives. First, it is important for traders to know that we are out there so they are aware that they will get a visit at some stage. Second, consumers must have confidence in their spending. Obviously, consumer confidence in spending matters for recovery.

Compliance allows us to focus on price display legislation. If prices are not displayed, it is a breach of the legislation. Another provision is the misleading indication of a price where the price at the till is higher than the price on the shelf about which people, rightly, get annoyed.

We will get complaints about pricing. Last year, there were 520 complaints made. We will then send a follow-up letter or telephone call asking what has happened to the store. Depending on how they deal with us or if they have come up on our system before, we would list them for a visit. We marry the level of complaints with location and with various retail sectors. Most of our visits are to grocery retailers because they have more items on sale. It is a mixture of the large retailers and smaller ones.

As to how many we pick, it is a risk-based approach. There is also an element of geographical spread. Even if we have not had any calls from Donegal, we will visit there and make sure our presence is known.

The main constraint to our work is staffing. Ten years ago, consumer compliance would have been focused on pricing alone. Our job now is still that, plus product safety legislation. We have 21 people working in the division, of which 40% are focused on product safety because it is an important area. When the NCA, National Consumer Agency, was originally established it was supposed to have 80 staff as approved by the Department of Finance. However, that was in 2007 and now everything has changed. We got caught by the recruitment moratorium. When we opened our doors in 2007, we had 67 people. Now, we have 37.

We are not complaining. The world has changed. Businesses are operating with less and consumers are spending less. We fully appreciate that there were efficiencies and reforms we could implement to make the agency better. We try to be as clever as we can with the assignment of our resources. However, if we had more staff, we could be out there more. Increasingly, we have noted it is not about what has happened on the shop floor but the contract or online. The latter is becoming increasingly important as the agency is responsible for the e-commerce directive.