Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is very welcome legislation. We need to strike a balance between very powerful enterprises now emerging in the world of big data, artificial intelligence and ICT and the consumer because that balance has shifted dramatically. Markets have changed. The way individuals interface with them has changed dramatically. The capacity to have a personal interaction with those who provide services is dramatically changed. I think it is becoming a subject of increasing concern among people. The Minister of State will have read during recent weeks about the spat between Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Spotify, one of the huge influences in delivering music and entertainment through online transmission. Clearly, it is an extraordinarily powerful platform but, at the same time, legitimate questions are being raised about the extent to which it promotes innovation and makes it very difficult for talent to emerge. That is a real concern. The same could be true more locally of the impact we see from the growth of media platforms on local media and national media, which are so important to the health of democracies such as ours.

As I said this morning when speaking to the Topical Issue matter I raised, on which I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Troy, got a report, very vulnerable consumers are being made mugs of by very powerful companies that use friction as a policy tool to prevent people from getting the best value. They are effectively profiteering at the cost of many of the most vulnerable consumers, whether older consumers or consumers who are not tech-savvy. Right across the spectrum of entertainment, mobile phones, TV and broadband, utilities and financial services, a dramatic change is occurring in the sort of model on which a lot of the theory surrounding good markets was built.

It is therefore welcome that we see today a change such that the CCPC can take administrative sanctions against companies. We were told for years and years that it was not possible in the Irish legal system to have administrative sanctions where a potential criminal offence was involved. It is really welcome that that has been overcome because the reality was that for a small Irish regulator or a competition authority to seek to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a criminal offence had been committed by a very large company with deep pockets, it was a David-and-Goliath battle. It was very difficult for those regulators to take on those very large companies. It meant they had to be highly selective in the cases they took on because of the sheer cost and difficulty of getting a prosecution. That daunting standard for a regulator meant they had to pull back. Like the Minister of State, I hope this will be a very significant change.

I have read through the Bill and there is no doubt but that there are hoops to be gone through. There is due process, and that is exactly as it should be, but the legislation means we will now be able, without going down the criminal route, to get to proceedings and sanctions that bring in remedies, whether the breaking up of companies, structural changes, behavioural changes, unbundling of products, the ending of rebates or the stopping of data sharing. These are significant new powers, but I would like to hear from the Minister on a question I have. My reading of the Bill is that competent authorities can investigate only through the very narrow prism of competition law. Therefore, even though ComReg or any of the other regulators can initiate administrative sanctions, it seems to be only on the two traditional issues of competition law - collusive behaviour and abusive dominance - that it can do so. Those are not easy routes to travel, and we need to see a point reached at which other codes of practice that represent reasonable and fair treatment can be pursued through administrative sanctions where they are not properly observed by large companies. This is not just a matter of collusive behaviour or abusive dominance. Traditionally, in the literature, it has been extremely difficult even to define abusive dominance, let alone to prove an offence has occurred. We therefore need to see a wider range of areas where the use of administrative sanctions can bring fairness into this. What is the reasonable use of personal data, for example, in the marketplace? That is something for which codes of reasonable practice should be established, and it should be possible for regulators to seek administrative sanctions where they are not being honoured. Similarly, as I said this morning, friction that deliberately obstructs consumers from getting value should be pursuable by administrative sanctions.

I would like clarification from the Minister of State that what the legislation provides for goes beyond my narrow reading of it, or for him to consider a broader base for these legislative powers, allowing them to be given to the many regulators who could oversee codes of good practice that would transform the approach of enterprise. In the long term, it is in enterprise's interest that we establish these high standards because, ultimately, enterprise depends on the trust of its consumers. If that is lost, those enterprises cannot thrive. I hope this is a vehicle whereby we can build a much stronger basis of trust. It is always said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I hope this Bill will bring a little bit more sunlight to some of those darker practices that ought to be stamped out.

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