Sean Barrett (Independent)

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 8, before section 6, to insert the following new section:

"6.—(a) Subsection (1) of section 30 of the Principal Act is amended by inserting the following paragraphs after paragraph (g)—

"(h) to study and analyse any practice or method of competition or decision with implications for competition in markets for goods and services that has its origins in a decision or action by a body working with or on behalf of a Minister of Government or Agency of Government;

(i) to analyse the actions and practices of all regulatory agencies, statutory bodies and ministerial departments of the State for violations of Part 1 of this Act;

(j) the right to publish to the public-at-large non-commercially sensitive findings and analyses of firms, regulators, agencies and sectors that that Authority has conducted as part of this Act;",

and

(b) in paragraph (b) of subsection (4), by the substitution of "section 14A" for "section 14".".

I believe section 14A was proposed by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton. Perhaps it was a typing mistake or a drafting error that got them mixed up. There has been no collusion between myself and the Minister, considering we are speaking about joint practices.

I want the Competition Authority to play a more dynamic role, a point alluded to by Members on all sides of the House. I hope we will get a date of when the next competition legislation comes through. As the Minister will note, there is more appetite for competition policy in the Seanad than was previously thought.

We need someone to regulate the regulators. There have been many unsatisfactory procedures in the past. Paul Gorecki of the ESRI drew attention to these in a recent paper. Energy prices, for example, have been pushed up because a former energy Minister interfered by imposing, as the OECD stated, unrealistic wind-farm targets on the energy sector. The Commission for Aviation Regulation, CAR, was pretty well destroyed by the then transport Minister, Noel Dempsey, who ordered it to increase charges by 41% so that the entire cost of the over-investment in two terminals at Dublin Airport was borne by the user and not the organisation. Interestingly, the orders for this appeared on the CAR website far sooner than they appeared on the then Department of Transport website. There was interference in the independence of that regulator.

Did we confuse the objectives of bank regulation by seeing the Central Bank and Financial Services Regulatory Authority as a promotional body for the IFSC and lost sight of regulation? When a sector costs the economy 40% of GDP when it has to be rescued, one has to question the competence of the regulators in charge of the sector. Everyone on all sides of the House has questioned that competence in the case of banking regulation. The Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board, CARB, has still not reported on what kind of accounts were prepared for these banks and on which the State was induced to invest in them.

The Public Transport Regulation Act gave the entire bus system by a direct award contract to deliberately avoid competitive tendering. That was sent to every Department in the screening regulatory impact analysis and all either said nothing or agreed. Accordingly, there is no protection for the consumer or potential new entrants. Someone had to take the school bus contract to court to know why it is not open to competitive tendering. There have been problems with refuse collection and the belief among some local authorities that it should be given to chosen companies rather than be determined by competition in which the consumer would decide.

Mr. Justice Bryan McMahon criticised how the then Department of Transport conducted itself in the awarding of the Swords Express bus licence by stating it had usurped the functions given to it in trust by the Oireachtas. There was a similar judgment by the Chief Justice, John Murray, on the way the Department of Health conducted itself with regard to controlling the market in health insurance, stating it had tried to usurp the functions of the Legislature.

All of what Senator Ó Clochartaigh and others have raised seems to happen every day. They are seriously damaging the competitiveness of the economy and they are anti-competitive in their intentions. I am sure the Department of Transport deliberately held up the Swords Express licence for two and a half years and then gave it to CIE in five days. Mr. Justice Bryan McMahon commented adversely on how the Department conducted itself.

No one should be exempt from being investigated by the Competition Authority. The British Civil Aviation Authority got too cosy with the operators of the UK's airports. Dr. John Fingleton, a former Trinity College Dublin colleague, and now head of the Office of Fair Trading, intervened to make a better market substitute for that system of failed regulation.

The amendment proposes to analyse the actions and practices of all regulatory agencies, statutory bodies and Departments for violations. The favourable treatment of the pharmaceutical industry in the Republic of Ireland meant there was a massive difference in the price of pharmaceuticals North and South of the Border as there was a much stricter regulatory regime for pharmaceuticals. We have come back a bit from that.

The amendment mentions "the right to publish to the public at large non-commercially sensitive findings and analyses of firms, regulators, agencies and sectors that the authority has conducted as part of this Act." In other words, I do not want the emphasis to be in relatively small instances - home heating oil and car prices were mentioned - and we should go for the entire gamut of public and consumer expenditure, with a much more dynamic Competition Authority acting on behalf of the consumer. There is a paper supporting what I am saying by Mr. Pat Massey and presented at the Kenmare conference on 15 October 2011. The World Economic Forum ranks Ireland as 25th out of 139 countries in the effectiveness of competition policy, and Mr. Massey indicated this put Ireland behind most of its EU partners and OECD countries, suggesting considerable scope for improvement. We mentioned this to the Minister, Deputy Bruton, on the last occasion, and the purpose of the amendment as proposed is to create a competition policy with teeth.

We are not satisfied with the very small number of prosecutions mentioned by the Minister of State. This is an attempt to introduce some kind of dynamic to the process. We were elected - in the case of the Seanad it was this time last year - to reform, and the public made that decision to change the vast majority of people in the Dáil, with 42 new Senators. Established institutions must be reformed and competition policy should be far more energetic and active. If the Minister of State cannot accept this amendment today, I ask that it be considered when the next competition Bill comes to the House. It should be done quickly because this is not, according to the World Economic Forum, one of our shining lights. I presume that the long tradition of protectionism has led to certain firms of solicitors and other people getting certain imports banned and tariffs or quotas imposed. That cosy relationship between insiders and outsiders in the Irish economy has come into existence but has not been properly tackled.