Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 8, between lines 36 and 37, to insert the following:

"(2) It shall be a condition of a licence under section 6 that—

(a) the premium rate service provider shall ensure that any service of an ongoing nature may be readily terminated by the user at any time, and in the case of a service provided by SMS, the user may terminate the service at any time by sending "stop" in reply to any SMS received,

(b) where a premium rate service provider fails to comply with paragraph (a) in any particular case, he or she shall refund the user in accordance with and subject to regulations under subsection (1) and shall pay the user compensation in accordance with and subject to such regulations.".

I welcome the Minister and his officials back to the House. As we said earlier on Committee Stage, the spirit of these amendments is to protect consumer interests. We are aware that, unfortunately, certain operators take advantage of people. Everyone has a mobile telephone and many people have two. Unfortunately, some people do not have the level of knowledge one would assume to subscribe to such services. For a variety of reasons, sometimes unwittingly, people might end up subscribing to a service and not discover that is the case until such time as the telephone bill arrives or their credit has been swallowed up.

In the context of amendment No. 2, in cases where that happens - the Minister is correct when he says we all know people who have been affected by it - one will not break the bank in terms of the amount of money concerned but, generally speaking, it is a wrong and if that is the case, it needs to be righted. If people are being treated in this manner, they need to be compensated by those responsible for the injustice in the first instance. All too often people can be lured into such arrangements, for example, to a weather alert or traffic alert system, and one might reasonably expect to be contacted once because of the requirements of a journey on a particular day. One might subsequently discover when a bill arrives that one has subscribed to a daily service at the cost of €1 plus VAT for each alert. The amounts concerned are not insignificant. When such a scenario arises, people should be compensated. A mechanism needs to be put in place to allow a swift cessation of any such activity.

Paragraph (b) of amendment No. 1 states, "where a premium rate service provider fails to comply with paragraph (a) in any particular case, he or she shall refund the user in accordance with and subject to regulations under subsection (1)". That is fair and reasonable.