Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

The Ceann Comhairle will be pleased to hear that I will be brief. A very interesting confrontation of ideas, worthy of note, took place during the course of this legislation. It was between an unelected, but appointed, lobby group, the consumer strategy group, and the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, an elected body nominated by this House. As every speaker, both Government and Opposition indicated, the elected representatives spoke about competition and choice in the broadest sense. They spoke about the social consequences of the absence of retailing activity and the economic effects that are beyond the issue of price. The consumer strategy group took an extraordinarily narrow view of retailing, construing it entirely in terms of what has been suggested, namely, an assumed benefit on price, unexpressed in terms of outcomes with regard to time and heavily reliant on assumptions that are proven to not exist, such as assumptions of perfect market.

In that sense we had a very narrow distorted debate on citizen choice, the future structure of retailing, the embedding of retailing in a social and economic milieu and distinctions of rural life in transition to conditions of urban life. These were the legitimate considerations of the committee. On the other hand, the unelected group decided it would go for where it saw its chance, and that is what happened. The second group of people, the Competition Authority, was shown to be informing the debate on a flawed statistical basis to which it never replied.

The point has been made by me, Deputy Morgan, my colleague Deputy Howlin and others that this was an opportunity to amend the Competition Act. Unfortunately, during the debate on Committee Stage we had a distortion of Article 85.1, a misinterpretation of the European Commission's position and a misinterpretation of European competition law. The suggestion that was made during Committee Stage was unfortunate. I have said enough about it and may have been unparliamentary previously on the matter.

Frankly, the suggestion that the owner of a pharmacy is in the same position as a freelance actor who is selling his or her services is wrong. There is an obvious distinction. There is continuity in the asset in one case — the person is selling the same thing under known and predictable conditions which he or she controls. The business is therefore appropriately regarded as an undertaking or commodity. I do not agree with the idea that freelance musicians, journalists, photographers and artists etc. are the same. The example the Minister quoted on Committee Stage involved a ruling in a European Union case concerning opera singers. If he had further investigated the case, he would have found that the case dealt with a company selling operatic services. Therefore, it was legitimately called an undertaking, but not the opera singer.

I find it unfortunate that on Committee Stage my name was mentioned and quoted from an Adjournment Debate. I was described as pained. I stated I had one interest in this matter, namely that my wife is a founder member of the Stanislavsky Studio and a member of Equity. I have known actors, writers and musicians for all of my adult life. This is how I know of the precariousness of their lives. The unworthy suggestion that mine was an instinctive reaction from people who assume that all artists are poor and all barristers are rich is an unworthy statement to put on the record of the Dáil.

I am left in the position where I will now advise the trade unions that are taking part in social partnership not to proceed with any talks unless the Trade Union Act 1941 is amended. We had two choices. It is strictly within the ambit of this legislation at this stage that it could have amended through a new section 4A something that——

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