Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

My party has been seeking this type of legislation for some time. In principle, we welcome the Bill and its objectives. There has been an enormous problem in this area for a number of years. Premium rates apply to traffic news, sports results, psychic, chat and horoscope services, as well as participating in various competitions on programmes such as "PlayTV". They involve the use of 1550 numbers in offering information services, etc. This obviously forms part of modern communications services and, as such, is not inherently wrong. We want to encourage the industry in Ireland and do not wish to regulate it to a level where it would not succeed. However, there have been abuses and wrongs. People have been duped; by merely accepting a text, they then received an entire sequence. They can be the recipients of unwanted material and enormous bills. Often the carrot may be concert tickets or alleged telephone credit. In many cases this is erroneous, but the prizes are attractive to vulnerable individuals. Young people are being codded, particularly young teenagers who run up exorbitant telephone bills.

Going through some of the aspects of the Bill, I take the Minister's point that in the case of sports results and news services, there is light regulation. There does not appear to be a huge difficulty in this regard, other than that one would want to see realistic pricing and the licensing of the providers of such services. The difficulty arises when it comes to participation in competitions. A number of such competitions are false. People are held on the telephone too long, they receive repeated messages and their bill runs up as they wait to give their answers to the competition. These lines are advertised in the national newspapers. There have been many questions concerning the programme "PlayTV" on TV3 in this regard.