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Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment

Presentation by the National Consumer Agency

28 May 2008

The full transcript of the Oireachtas committee session is also available online

1. Introduction

Introduction by Ann Fitzgerald, Chief Executive, on behalf of the National Consumer Agency

Chairman, I would like to thank you, on behalf of my colleagues Mr John Shine, Director of Commercial Practices Division, Ms Catherine Lenihan, Assistant Director and I, for inviting us to meet with your Committee today.

We appreciate the opportunity to share with you the work of the NCA in its first year in operation and to respond to any queries or suggestions which you and Committee members may have. As this is our first meeting with your Committee, we are anxious to give you as full a picture as possible of our activities over the past year.

As you are aware, the National Consumer Agency was established under the Consumer Protection Act, with effect from 1st May 2007. The Agency replaced the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA) and was given a much more extensive mandate than ODCA had. This mandate includes:

  • Enforcement of consumer protection legislation,
  • Education / awareness activities,
  • Provision of advice and information to consumers and
  • Research and advocacy on behalf of consumers

Our staffing complement is currently 58 (ODCA 62). We have an approved staff complement of 80, and have just recruited our senior management team. We are part of the Government’s decentralisation programme and are working towards being inCork Cityby June 2009. We envisage that, on the move to Cork, we will have had 90% staff turnover.

In summary, we are in a period of major transition. Our priority, however, is to give the best service we possibly can to consumers while dealing with the inevitable challenges which arise in the context of major organisational transition.

In our activities over the past year, we have sought to focus, insofar as possible, on areas of major consumer detriment and to identify emerging trends which are against consumers’ interest and address them.

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