Mr. John Keane:

I thank the Deputy for the question. In terms of falling foul of the legislation and some of the suggested fines, it is on a scale from compliance to summary notice and up as far as prosecution and penalty and so forth. They are on a scale from €250 to €1,000 and so forth. At the lower end, there is a fine of €250 for falling foul of the legislation. For a large actor within the food supply chain, I do not think anyone present will agree that is a fair reflection in terms of the scale of large producers as compared with smaller producers. That is where to start. At the lower end of the scale, it is up to a maximum of €1,000. That is far too weak.

In terms of the larger enforcement piece - I will come to enforcement momentarily - I echo the remarks of Mr. Roddy in respect of the figure of €500,000 and a percentage share of the overall turnover or profitability of the company. There is precedent for that in the context of breaches of the GDPR legislation, which can lead to a fine of up to 4% of a company's turnover or profitability. It is in that region. For a large company, 4% is a significant figure and that would be a deterrent to partaking in unfair trading activity. The sanctions are not stringent enough in terms of deterrence.

The issue of enforcement is referred to in our summary as well. We welcomed how strong the committee was on it in its questioning in respect of the CCPC. Farmers and individual primary producers have no clarity right now as to what are the requirements or criteria for an investigation to be started under competition law. Several years ago, there were a lot of complaints to the CCPC in respect of certain activity in the beef sector. That was not pursued and some of those items are up there. Is responsibility being put on the primary producer to garner the evidence for an investigation to even begin or are there powers within the Bill for this authority to commence investigation on suspicion of a breach? The representatives of the CCPC who appeared before the committee referred to the severity of starting an investigation and the severity of the potential consequences, such as a sentence of ten years' imprisonment and so forth, as being a deterrent but the mere outcome of an investigation should not be a deterrent to the investigation being commenced. That point did not make sense. From our side of things, it is critical to make clear the criteria for starting an investigation so that farmers and primary producers can ascertain or have a barometer of the evidence that is needed for an investigation to start.