Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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178. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the extent to which administrative or civil fines for breaches of competition law are available to enforcement bodies here; and her plans to improve enforcement options in this regard. [42858/18]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The current legal position is that civil fines are not provided for in Irish law for anti-competitive practices. My Department obtained advice on the issue of civil fines from the Office of the Attorney General to the effect that civil fines are not provided for in Irish law for anti-competitive practices having regard to Article 38.1 of the Constitution which provides that no person shall be tried on any criminal charge save in due course of law. In that context, any national legislation to introduce civil fines that would lower the burden of proof from beyond reasonable doubt to the balance of probability would pose constitutional difficulties having regard to the protection afforded in Article 38.1 of the Constitution.

On 22 March 2017, the EU Commission published a proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council to empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market. One of the Directive’s aims is to ensure that all National Competition Authorities are able to impose effective deterrent fines. The proposal is currently with the lawyer-linguist legal service of the European Council and it is due to be published in the Official Journal shortly. Member States will have two years to implement the directive into national law from that date.