Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I second the amendment. The two amendments seem reasonable and the Minister might explain to us whether he believes they are not reasonable. The statistics show that premium rate services on fixed line and mobile devices have grown sixfold from one year to the next and were worth €195 million to the industry last year. Some 76 million chargeable premium text messages were sent in 2008. Taking all of that into account, there are obviously vulnerable categories of people who have mobile phones and who may genuinely look for information from some of these service providers but may find it difficult to get out of the contract they enter into with them.

Amendment No. 1 is simple. It obliges the service provider to stop the service if the user sends the word "stop" in a text message from the user's mobile phone. This is the system that is used already. I do not see any reason it should not be enshrined in the licensing arrangements to oblige the provider to stop the service once it has been instructed to do so by the user. Perhaps the Minister has another mechanism in mind that might clarify this or put into effect the spirit of this amendment to give more comfort to consumers that when they want to stop a premium rate service, which is quite expensive and can build up over time, there is a mechanism that obliges the service provider to do so when instructed. That is the spirit of the amendment, which the Minister might address.

As regards compensation, I understand the Minister has allowed for fines of up to €250,000 but there needs to be clear sanction in this area and consumers need to know there is such sanction where the service they are being sold is being abused, or if they are being defrauded or misled in any way. The levels of sanction must be clearly in place. Where fraud or abuse of the system is found by those in authority - either ComReg or another authority - there should be some level of compensation over and above a normal refund.

I quoted the statistics for a reason. This is now a huge business and it will grow exponentially in the years ahead because mobile telephones and devices are becoming more accessible. The applications that are on them now are such that one could run a laptop from a mobile phone. Premium rate services will be offered on these mobile devices so it is important we use this opportunity to regulate this area so people cannot be defrauded. Where they are defrauded, we must ensure there are good compensation measures, and when people instruct the service provider to stop, we must ensure the provider does so and does not continue sending premium messages. I accept this is the general thrust of the Bill, which is why we support it. There is much anecdotal evidence that where people tell the service provider to stop, it does not do so and continues to send messages and to charge users. This is the general spirit of the amendments, which I support.