Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to examine the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2023. Fianna Fáil supports this Bill, which is required in order to transpose Directive (EU) 2020/1828 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2020 on representative actions for the protection of the collective interests of consumers. The latter is part of European Commission's proposals for a new deal for consumers to ensure that all European consumers fully benefit from their rights under European law.

While the EU already has some of the strongest rules on consumer protection in the world, recent cases like the dieselgate scandal have shown that it is difficult to enforce them fully in practice. This new law is an EU-wide response to recent mass consumer rights breaches by private companies, such as the car emissions scandal of 2015 and the mass flight cancellations of 2017, which were referred to by previous speakers.

The Bill will allow for several cross-border qualified entities to come together to represent the European consumer where they have been harmed by the same alleged infringement that has been caused by the same trader in several member states. Importantly, this will not impose an extra administrative burden on businesses and will not affect the vast majority of traders that treat customers well.

The new deal for consumers package was launched by the European Commission on 11 April 2018. It aims to facilitate co-ordination and effective action from national consumer authorities at EU level and reinforce public enforcement action and better protection of consumer rights. The Bill before us will implement this directive, which is welcome. I thank the Minister of State and his officials for bringing the Bill forward. As the Minister of State indicated, this legislation is complex and also relates to the Department of Justice.

More needs to be done, but the Bill is long overdue. Representative and multiparty actions have been required for some time. This Bill is very welcome on that front. Earlier, I contributed to the debate on the Courts Bill, which will facilitate an increase in the number of judges across our courts system. The Minister of State referred to the fact that the High Court will be hearing such cases, so additional resources for the courts will be required. It is welcome that this is going to happen. Extra funding is being provided to facilitate that.

I look forward to the Bill being progressed by the Select Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

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