Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)

It is a privilege I had not anticipated before the Chair called him.

One could not fault this Bill in and of itself, in that fines and prison terms are being increased and there is an effort to punish in a more severe way those who commit offences against competition law. However, it lacks detection provisions. It is a well known tenet of the philosophy of punishment that detection is better than punishment. A problem in Ireland is that many cartels have not been challenged. Where there have been convictions, fines have been imposed, but the Competition Authority has often refused to investigate and, consequently, has not been able to enforce. Constant complaints come from the Competition Authority, as they do from everywhere else, about being under-resourced. This is undoubtedly true.

We are about to face a critical situation in the banking area, in that it will be dominated by two pillar banks. We will need competition more than ever. The exit of Bank of Scotland Ireland, the disappearance of Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank and the merger of EBS with AIB mean that the pillar banks will be able to return to their original position, that is, zero competition, in the years to come. What measures does the Minister propose to introduce to ensure that competition returns to the banks when the pillar banks regain their extraordinary duopoly or dominance? We need a strict regulatory regime and Competition Authority. We also need enforcement to ensure that the banks do not take their customers apart in the way they used to do. I am not confident that the Government intends to or will be able to take these measures. History teaches us banks and bankers continuously find ways to impose a cartel on their customers. Were I in AIB or Bank of Ireland, I would be rubbing my hands with glee at the easiness with which they will be able to make a significant amount of money on the back of running a silent or open cartel.

Another issue arises directly from the question of resources. Dr. John Fingleton, who was in charge of the Competition Authority some years ago, stated that €4 billion per year was lost to the economy in the 2004-05 period as a result of uncompetitive practices. According to him, the Competition Authority could only hold one proper investigation per annum. This is laughable. Considering our history of cartels and a lack of competition, it seems that we need a vastly more resourced Competition Authority. If Dr. Fingleton's figures were right and there was a €4 billion saving to be made, the cost benefit must show a profit. I would be interested in the Minister of State's comments in this regard.

There is further evidence. In or around the same time that Mr. Patrick Massey resigned from the Competition Authority as its director of competition enforcement, he stated that it did not have the resources available to him to carry out his job properly. It is all very well introducing more fines, but if no one is brought to court or no investigations are carried out because the authority does not have the resources to challenge the big players, that introduction is meaningless. It is a minor deterrent and will not prevent cartels or anti-competitive practices.

I hope the Minister of State will answer a specific question. I will leave the bankers aside. I sympathise with Deputy Clare Daly's comments. The most successful Irish company is supposedly CRH. It has a good profit record, but it has not had much competition. CRH disturbs me. Only last year Poland fined it €26 million for uncompetitive practices. This was a great deal of money and was based on a percentage of turnover. I am told, although I am open to contradiction, that the practices of which it was found guilty in Poland are the practices it is happy to engage in here. Why has CRH been the subject of so many investigations in Europe yet none in Ireland? It was also fined by the European Court of Justice in the mid-1990s. Many complaints have been made about it by various groups. One such group, comprising a small number of private cement industrialists, is called Framus and has been campaigning against CRH's activities for 15 years. Year after year, small concrete producers have claimed that price fixing, cartel-type activities and all sorts of practices of which the Competition Authority would disapprove, condemn and outlaw have been practised by CRH, yet any effort to get their case to the authority has been refused or frustrated. Why? The evidence from overseas appears clear, in that CRH is not the white sepulchre of a company that it is made out to be. Rather, an examination of CRH's activities overseas finds that it has been indulging in activities of which we would not approve. However, the Competition Authority has refused to carry out a wholescale investigation. Let us face it: this company is a quasi-monopoly. It has one or two competitors but in effect it has a huge amount of dominance. It is exactly the type of company of which we should beware. This type of company, activity and dominance leads to abuses. The monopoly could be tolerated if we were sure it would be investigated. However, we are not sure of this as evidenced by the number of small producers of concrete and cement complaining. What is stopping a serious investigation by the Competition Authority? Is it simply resources or that it does not think there is a case? The evidence appears to be that it is a matter of resources which is stopping it rather than the absence of a case against the company.

I appeal to the Minister of State not to take the attitude that CRH, like many other companies in Ireland, is too big to tackle. We learned much about companies being too big to tackle; they are accidents waiting to happen. We saw with the banks and the Quinn group and all private companies which abuse a monopoly that governments refuse to take them on. How did so many companies which have dominance get into so much trouble in the end? We must be very careful about this company. What the public, small companies and those companies being put out of business by CRH need, and the least they deserve, is to be reassured that an independent investigation can and will be held. They will then be reassured, whatever the findings, that at least we are not sparing people in business because they are as powerful as the Government or because they have good connections in the right places. This has always been the situation in Ireland with regard to business. Big business is too close to government and the big banks were too close to government. Big business has too many people who have the ear of people in positions of power and CRH is no exception to this. People in Europe stand and stare when they find out there really has not been any proper investigation of this monolith in Ireland.

I appeal to the Minister of State not only to state that something is being done about competition and that people are being fined far more money and longer prison sentences can be applied but to give us the reassurance we need that there will be detection of breaches of competition law so that it will be prevented and that there will be impartial investigations. This is an opportunity to tackle the largest company in the State and to state that we are prepared to challenge it, powerful as it is. I ask the Minister of State to take this proposal extremely seriously.

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