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

I join with other Deputies in saying this Bill is very welcome. I also join with other Deputies, however, in saying we need a much more activist consumer protection approach in this country, particularly at this time of rising costs but more importantly at a time of imbalance in the relationship between these large companies, which not only have access to market power but that also have an extraordinary imbalance in access to information. The data profiling they have of their consumers is completely different to the position of many of the users, particularly those who are not perhaps as familiar with technology or who are not digital natives.

All the time we are seeing the encroachment on those who rely on freephone or phone services to get a response and, increasingly, there is no response at the end of the line from these larger utility providers.

I urge the Minister of State to consider a cross-government audit of all consumer protection regulators to examine just how effective they are being in protecting consumers in all the key areas, which are price, switching, complaints mechanisms, service standards, access to dispute resolution services and so on. They are a fairly standard mix and they are recited in the Bill in many provisions, including in access to refunds and so on, where it gives stronger powers to ComReg and confirms some of its existing powers. We need to see a consistent and activist approach from Government in ensuring all our regulators are acting to a high standard. Let us be fair; in the switching sector we have the obligation to inform people when they are coming to the end of their contracts and people must also be informed of the best charge for their mix of service. There needs to be an audit of that by ComReg to see how effective that mix is because there is a penalty for early exit from contracts. Does defeat the purpose of it? Are we seeing this regime deliver better protection for consumers in the communications area than in other sectors that do not have those same protections? It is only if a cross-government approach is taken that we will begin to see the consistency or lack thereof in the approach the Central Bank, the CRU and all the various regulators take.

I also welcome that we are imposing obligations on companies to take security seriously and inform us of incidents and so on. To put this into perspective we recently, and rightly, put clear legal limits on how the State can access information that we, as consumers, leave behind us in locational footprints, the sites we visit and the user activity we conduct. However, it begs the question of how citizens are protected from cyberhacking and from the legitimate ownership of some of this data, which we often inadvertently give permission for. It is a powerful tool and there is no serious assessment of what the proper limits on the use of that are. GDPR is an important protection but I suspect there are many other elements, such as what is embedded in algorithms that are being used to determine choices that are made and how they impact on citizens’ rights. There are a lot of issues here that we need to explore and an audit of different sectors would be helpful.

I welcome civil enforcement because for years when I was a Minister in different Departments I was told it could not be done and there were a thousand legal reasons for same but now we are doing it. That is welcome but it maybe gives us a timely reminder of what Robert F. Kennedy said when he asked "Why not?" Perhaps we should be doing more of that. The consumer standards are welcome but ComReg should aggressively publish those standards that are being delivered by these companies. We should promote a league table and competition among these providers in delivering quality of service, quick handling of complaints and keen and quick repairs. All those issues are important but they slip down the priority list unless sunlight is shone on them. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant and that is clear in the case of these large companies competing with one another that do not want to see reputational damage. We need ComReg to audit these various new areas to see how strongly the different companies are performing as well as publish that information and be open in encouraging the notion that customer service standards are important and that these companies will be judged by them. If they are not answering their freephone numbers and if people cannot get access to them then that should emerge and we will begin to see that standard being applied. Information is power and if we can get the information on that level of performance out there that would be beneficial.

Another area where ComReg should become more active is broadband. We know the commercial sector has carved out areas from the national broadband plan which are not open to the broadband plan delivering service but the reality is there are a lot of frustrated customers within those areas where the commercial sector is supposed to deliver. We do not see transparency in the plans of those companies to live up to their commitments that they would deliver these services commercially and that we would not have to have State-supported delivery in those areas. That frustrates people and at a time broadband is so important to people, we should do that.

I tried to look up the ComReg price comparison tool and I found it difficult to do so. I do not pretend to be a whizz at this but I found it difficult to use so maybe the Minister of State should look at that.

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