Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1669. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the status of the consumer rights Bill, the general scheme of which her Department had previously published; if she is considering greater consumer protection in relation to unfair contract terms; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1980/17]

Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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My Department originally published the draft Scheme of a comprehensive Consumer Rights Bill for public consultation on 25 May 2015. Part 5 of the draft Scheme proposes to strengthen consumer protection against unfair terms, including removing the exemption for negotiated terms, narrowing the scope of the terms exempt from assessment for unfairness, and expanding the list of contract terms presumed to be unfair. While I am anxious to progress the Scheme of the Consumer Rights Bill, I have to take account of current European Union legislative proposals for Directives on consumer contracts for the supply of digital content and consumer contracts for the online and other distance sale of goods. These proposals which were announced in May 2015 and published in December 2015 overlap very substantially with two of the main parts of the draft Scheme of the Consumer Rights Bill. Discussions on the digital content proposal at working party level have proceeded rapidly with a first reading of the proposal completed by April 2016 and agreement reached at the June Justice and Home Affairs Council on the basic principles of the proposal and on political guidelines for future work on it. The principles and guidelines endorsed by the Council provided the basis for a revised text of the proposal prepared by the Dutch and Slovak Presidencies. Working Party discussions over 12 meeting days during the Slovak Presidency in 2016 examined the revised text in detail. In the view of the Presidency, these discussions made good progress and provided the basis for a policy debate on a number of aspects of the proposal at the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 8-9 December.

The incoming Maltese Presidency has indicated that it aims to achieve agreement on a general approach to the digital content proposal in the first half of 2017. In this situation, I have to consider the advisability of bringing forward a legislative proposal to the Oireachtas when a directly related and fully harmonised legislative proposal may be at an advanced stage of the European Union legislative process. The wisdom of introducing legislation in the Oireachtas in 2017, if large parts of that legislation would have to be repealed or substantially amended within a relatively short space of time, is obviously open to question. I will continue to review the progress of the two European Union proposals in 2017 with a view to deciding the best course of action to take with regard to the Scheme of the Consumer Rights Bill.

On the issue of unfair contract terms, EU legislation already exists in this area. The European Communities (Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts) (Amendment) Regulations 2013, which gave effect to the corresponding European Council Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, applies to any term in a contract concluded between a seller of goods or supplier of services and a consumer which has not been individually negotiated. Whilst contracts for financial services such as mortgages may indeed come within the scope of the Regulations, certain terms within such contracts are excluded from the scope of the Regulations. While these Regulations are enforced by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, ComReg and the Central Bank, it is ultimately a matter for the Courts to determine whether a specific term of a contract is unfair having regard to the features of the contract and the particular provisions of the Regulations.