Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the introduction of the Consumer Rights Bill. It is a much-needed consolidation of existing consumer rights legislation and it strengthens other areas of consumer rights that were in dire need of modernisation, particularly regarding digital goods and services.

Many of the reforms in this Bill are existing EU law, coming from the sale of goods directive, the digital content directive and elements of the omnibus directive. The first two directives, both introduced in 2015, were due to be transposed into Irish law by 1 January this year, while the omnibus directive, proposed in 2017, is to be implemented by 28 May. Their inclusion in this Bill is welcome and somewhat overdue, but I acknowledge that putting together consolidated legislation such as this takes considerable time and effort on the part of the Department.

I would like to ask the Minister about the decision not to transpose Articles 2, 5, 6 and 7 of the omnibus directive at this time. There is nothing in them that struck me as particularly controversial.

Article 2 deals with the rules for how member states should label price reductions in terms of transparency, while Article 5 requires the provision of a single digital information point for citizens looking for their consumer rights on out-of-court dispute resolution benefits. Will these be transposed in a separate Bill? It may well be the case that consolidated legislation is limited in terms of adding additional things. If that is the reason, I would understand that. The Minister of State might tell us how they might be introduced, and why they were not included in this Bill so that we can at least understand the position.

The sale of goods and the digital content directives were formed with the goal of contributing to the faster growth of the digital Single Market. They were shaped, in part, on the outcome of the 2014 EUROSTAT survey, which found that 18% of consumers had purchased online from another EU country, while 55% did so domestically. I suspect the figure is now significantly higher than that. The pandemic will have driven that particular aspect of trade to a much greater degree than was the case before.

At the time, there was a clear need to ensure that consumers had proper protections while buying goods online from other EU member states and, importantly, that they were aware of their rights. Of course, that has changed since Brexit. A lot of trade was done with Britain. It goes without saying that those numbers are completely different now. Some 87% of people in 2020 purchased services online. Modernisation in terms of consumer protections in the digital sphere has been sorely needed for a long time now and we have been quite slow to catch up in that regard. Much of our consumer protection legislation was drawn up long before there was widespread use of the Internet, which means that consumers online have had little or no protection from practices which have been illegal in the real world for decades.

I am focusing on the digital side of things, but for those who are lucky enough to buy their homes there can be many issues, such as estates not being finished and so on. People very often feel that, in terms of consumer protection, sometimes the big things are not protected. We have fallen into serious problems on foot of not paying attention to that side of things. It is somewhat off the beaten track, but, for example, the regulation of builders in Australia puts the consumer at the centre and elevates standards. Sometimes we have not paid attention to the big things and they come back and bite us. We have seen that in many different ways.

As it stands, people do not have the same rights if they purchase digital products such as streaming services or downloads as they do when a they buy a physical item. It can be very frustrating. Very often things default to payment, even though people do not want to continue using a service. People buy something on a monthly basis and then discover that they pay the next month and have to go through a rigmarole to cancel the service. Very often the rigmarole is pretty difficult for people, in particular those who are not tech savvy.

These facts will come as a surprise to most people who naturally assume they have standard consumer rights to a refund, exchange or repair of the goods they buy, no matter where they come from. This Bill will, thankfully, rectify that situation by bringing the protections for digital goods and services into line with the standard existing protections. This does, however, point to the need to ensure people are properly informed about their consumer rights and protections and what protections they have.

Fines will be introduced for companies found to engage in misleading or aggressive commercial practices such as fake reviews, following action taken by the consumer watchdog. We all wonder when we are reading a review of a hotel or holiday whether it is written by a real person. It is only when we see a large number of such reviews that there is a possibility of objectivity. A crackdown on bad actors who write false or glowing reviews of themselves on various online review sites is sorely needed. An abundance of choice in terms of providers for goods and services online can sometimes be overwhelming for customers. Many people go through the effort of researching providers to ensure the money they spend will be safe. For that research and careful consideration to be undermined by fake reviews and ratings on sites such as Yelp or Trustpilot does an absolute disservice to the consumer. It also means that trustworthy businesses which would never consider such an action are badly impacted. There is an unfair advantage with bad actors getting an unfair advantage. Equally, in the service sector a business truly does hinge on its reputation.

The most important aim of the Bill is to allow the CCPC to take enforcement action against traders who fail to provide consumers with a remedy or reimbursement for faulty goods and services. The CCPC has provided a very valuable service in informing consumers of their rights and enforcing competition law, but it has been sorely lacking in teeth for a long time. Very often our regulators, in theory, have a remit, but they need to be resourced so that they can have that in practice. We have a lot of law in theory in this country, but when we start looking at how it is enforced it very often falls down. There is no doubt that it requires more teeth. The circumstances in which the CCPC can issue fixed payment notices will be expanded, as will the time period for bringing forward criminal prosecutions, which will increase from two to three years.

A further critical development is the implementation of the omnibus directive. The Bill will amend existing law to provide for fines of up to 4% of annual turnover of the relevant member state and up to €2 million if turnover information is not available for certain breaches, including in Part 5, which deals with consumer information and cancellation rights, and Part 6, which deals with unfair terms in consumer contracts.

We have historically had a bad habit, as I said, of giving enforcement agencies a large remit but no power to fix the problems they are being asked to resolve. We have seen this with the CCPC and can observe the same problem with agencies such as the Standards in Public Office Commission, SIPO, which is also in dire need of reform and an expanded remit and enforcement powers. It is in a different sphere, but it makes reports every year which we ignore. We should be paying far more attention to the kind of flags they are raising.

All in all, this Bill goes a long way towards modernising our consumer protection legislation by transposing the three EU directives as well as by ensuring the legislation is easier to find and understand through consolidation. Indeed, I wish we could have other pieces of consolidated legislation, in particular in the criminal justice and transport areas, because trying to make sense of the law when there are bits and pieces all over the place can be really tough. It requires an expertise that most people do not have the ability to pay for.

I welcome the fact that this is consolidating legislation. I reiterate the point that sometimes we are not regulating for the big things that cause us problems. I refer to things like pyrite or mica and shortcuts being taken underground. Some of us remember when HomeBond was not available at a time when people thought it would be their fallback position when their homes were damaged by pyrite.

One sometimes has more consumer protection when it comes to small things such as a packet of crisps or biscuits than for something that is a very big outlay and can cause serious problems for the individual, but also sometimes for the State as well.

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