Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I am the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Business, Enterprise and Innovation. My committee colleagues, including Deputy Quinlivan, and I have spent quite a bit of time focusing on the issue of gift vouchers. We carried out pre-legislative scrutiny on a Bill brought forward by a colleague of mine, Deputy Niall Collins, and there were many similarities between the two Bills. Regardless of where the Bill comes from, it is high time that we have legislation to protect the consumer. That is the most important issue.

As someone with a retail background who has worked on both sides of the counter all my working life, I have a lot of experience with gift vouchers and the way they can be exploited in different businesses and shops. In the main, people are fair and will put an expiry date a couple of years hence on the gift voucher. The consumer knows that if they buy a gift voucher for €100, it is the same as having cash in their pocket and they will have the opportunity to spend it. Unfortunately, some businesses, for example, are much more rigorous with their terms and conditions and, if a gift voucher expires after a year, it is as good as the consumer losing €100 from their pocket as he or she does not get the opportunity to spend it. I welcome the fact that the gift vouchers will have a five-year time limit. That is important because sometimes people might receive a substantial gift voucher. At Christmas, many people get gift vouchers as a tax-free bonus from work and they might spend a couple of hundred euro out of the voucher and then it goes into the back of the wallet, or it is put away and forgotten about. It is important that the voucher is there for people and they know it will be not reduce in value.

We have to put the consumer first and foremost. Money is hard earned and it is important that people know that, when they buy a voucher, they are protected. It is also important that the terms and conditions are printed clearly and consumers know what they are. The time that vouchers remain valid can vary and it is important that there is standardisation of that across the board. The Bill provides for new regulations on the sale of gift vouchers and the contracts for their supply by amending the Consumer Protection Act 2007. The Bill also establishes a welcome definition of gift vouchers.

The unregulated sector of gift vouchers accounts for 65% of the market. These are mainly single brand store cards and shopping centre cards. There is no protection of funds loaded on cards and retailers use the fund as normal work capital and thus, if a retailer collapses, the funds are lost to consumers. That is something we have witnessed for many years. People with gift vouchers worth €50, or €100, or whatever, lose it when a business collapses. That certainly needs to be looked at.

The regulated sector accounts for 35% of the gift voucher market. These would more often be electronic vouchers. It has come to my attention that, for some gift vouchers, after a year passes the value of the voucher reduces by a small percentage every month. One will not notice that if a gift voucher is worth a couple of hundred euro.

If a person has a gift voucher for €20 - it could be a One4all voucher given to a grandchild by a grandparent - its value, after the 12 months expires, is reduced incrementally by a small percentage. If one hands over €20 for a voucher, then it should be worth that amount over time. It should be the same as having cash in one’s pocket. Unfortunately, that is not the way it always works out.

I welcome the legislation. The business, enterprise and innovation committee did much work on this area. One quibble I have is that the committee spent much time on pre-legislative scrutiny of a similar Private Members’ Bill and then the Government came forward with its own Bill. Pre-legislative scrutiny is worthwhile and timely. It was unfortunate that a good Bill, like the Private Members’ Bill in question, was accepted by the whole committee but could not receive a money message. The Government then came forward with its own Bill.

We must put the customer first and it is high time we had legislation in this area. I hope that every Member will support the Bill and that we can move it quickly through the Oireachtas.

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