John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State. He outlined the main purpose of the legislation, which is to enable the Competition Authority to continue its work. Fine Gael will not oppose the Bill on Second Stage but will seek to make a number amendments on Committee Stage. The authority is an important State agency and it has an important role. The limited implementation of reports it has produced and recommendations it has made by the Government during my time in politics has been remarkable. It raises a broader question about how the Oireachtas and the Government goes about implementing the contents of its reports.

The Minister of State mentioned the new system whereby the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation will appoint temporary members to the authority, which is the main thrust of the legislation. The provision dealing with appointments in the 2002 Act is vague. The Minister of State outlined the criteria appointees have to meet if they are selected. Section 35(5) states that for someone to be eligible for membership of the authority he or she must have "sufficient expertise in or experience of one or more of the following areas, namely, law, economics, public administration, consumer affairs or business generally". Any member of the population could qualify on that basis. We are all consumers and the Act does not go into detail to define what is "sufficient expertise". The system of appointing temporary members is vague and it is a far cry from what we were told would happen when the Government was formed. Subsequently, there were different pronouncements by Ministers regarding appointments to the boards of State agencies. They said they would have to be not just political friends of the appointing Minister and they would have to prove they had a vigorous and thorough understanding of the brief of the body to which they were being appointed. Fine Gael and other parties have consistently proposed that appointees to State bodies should be subject to questioning by the relevant Oireachtas committee. In this case, it is the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and I will table an amendment in this regard on Committee Stage.

Much of the good work done by the Competition Authority over the past 12 years remains to be implemented. It has produced significant reports on a number of sheltered professions, in particular, and most, if not all, of the authority's recommendations relating to dentists, architects, barristers and other professional service providers have not been implemented by the Government. Where recommendations were implemented, no explanation was furnished by the Government as to why they were implemented while others were ignored. It is unsatisfactory that the Government would establish an agency with an important function and then proceed to ignore many of its recommendations without proffering an opinion as to why they were not being implemented. The Government may be correct in many cases not to introduce the changes recommended but, in the absence of an analysis or commentary on why certain decisions are made and others are not, the entire scenario is unsatisfactory. There needs to be a complete change in how Departments deal with the recommendations of the Competition Authority and other arms of Government. There needs to be much more transparency and clarity about why certain decisions are made and others are not. The Minister of State said the heads of the new competition Bill are being discussed and they are due before the Cabinet in the not too distant future. I hope that legislation, which will amalgamate the National Consumer Agency and the Competition Authority, will address the implementation of recommendations from the authority. The current scenario is highly unsatisfactory.

The role of the authority is narrow. It is completely focused on the relationship between the consumer and the retailer. I refer to the relationships between retailers and suppliers, which relates to my greatest criticism of the operation of the authority. Most of the work it has done is good but officials have never focused on the other aspect of competition, which is the relationship between the retailer and the supplier, whether the supplier is a farmer or a wholesaler who sells a product to put it on our shelves. Significant work must be done in this regard and I hope the new Bill later this year will give major powers to the new amalgamated body to examine this relationship. Members on all sides of the House and the enterprise committee have consistently raised the issue of the relationship between large multiples and their suppliers as well as consumers who buy the products at the end of the day.

Representatives of a body appeared before the enterprise committee recently. They referred to competition law and the role of the Competition Authority and whether the primary legislation needed to be amended to ensure a focus on other aspects of competition and not only on the relationship between the consumer and the person from whom he or she is buying a product or service. I hope when the legislation comes before the Oireachtas later this year the Minister of State will give an honest opinion on how he feels competition law should be implemented in future. We have focused primarily on the relationship with consumers and, while it is vital and is the most obvious aspect of competition, there is much more to competition than just the ultimate relationship between the supplier and purchaser of a service.

I will not oppose Second Stage but I will seek to make a number of amendments on Committee Stage to ensure the appointment of temporary members to the authority is done through a more transparent process, that these members will be subject to scrutiny by the Oireachtas before they are appointed and that the criteria relating to the qualifications they hold will be more stringent than the vague definition mentioned by the Minister of State. While I do not oppose the Bill, it is unsatisfactory that we have to rush it through to ensure the authority can continue to function. I do not know whether the primary legislation was too restrictive and did not allow for enough members to be appointed in the first place in the event of resignation and retirement but we have arrived at a position that emergency legislation has had to be introduced to ensure it maintains its role. I do not understand how the process laid down in the original legislation for the appointment of members could not have been set in train before now to ensure we did not arrive at this juncture and have to pass emergency legislation. For that reason it is somewhat unsatisfactory. Given the significant function of the authority, it is crucial this legislation should be passed to ensure it can continue its important work.