Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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173. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation if his attention has been drawn to the placement of advertisements by alleged rogue traders allegedly using illegitimate landline phone numbers in the Golden Pages and other telephone directories; his views that citizens will engage the services of such traders thinking them to be reputable service providers; if there is legislative or policy guidance for telephone directories to check the legitimacy of persons and companies who are placing advertisements in their publications. [49080/14]

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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As the question does not specify the purpose for which illegitimate landline numbers are alleged to have been placed in telephone directories by rogue traders, it is difficult to ascertain which provisions of consumer protection legislation are likely to be most applicable. If the purpose is to get consumers to call telephone numbers charged at premium rate in the mistaken belief that the numbers are those of reputable service providers, the practice would appear to be a matter in the first instance for the Commission for Communications Regulation whose Code of Practice on Premium Rate Services sets out rules on the provision, promotion and content of these services and outlines the conditions applying to licensed premium rate service providers. Misleading advertising is regulated more generally by the Consumer Protection Act 2007. The Act provides, among other things, that a commercial practice is misleading if it includes the provision of false information in relation to a wide range of matters relating to the trader and his or her goods or services, and if that information would be likely to cause the average consumer to make a purchasing decision that he or she would not otherwise make. A trader who engages in such a misleading commercial practice commits an offence.

As regards responsibility of telephone directory companies to check the legitimacy of those placing advertisements, the Consumer Protection Act 2007 provides that an advertiser who publishes an advertisement which contravenes the Act does not commit an offence if the advertiser proves that he or she did not know, and had no reason to suspect, that its publication would be in contravention of the Act. In order o assist enforcement of the Act’s provisions on misleading advertising, an advertiser who accepts or agrees to publish an advertisement is required to make a record of the name and address of a trader who places an advertisement, and to keep that record for not less than two years from the date of its publication.