Legislation set to be introduced next year will make it easier for consumers to cancel contracts for services such as broadband that do not work as advertised.
The Consumer Rights Bill was sent out for consultation in May and it is now understood that the government plans to bring it to the Oireachtas early in the new year.
Robert Troy, the junior enterprise minister, has called the legislation the “most substantial reform of consumer contract law” in 40 years.
Responding to a question from Richard Bruton, a Fine Gael TD, Troy said: “Its main aims are to consolidate existing primary and secondary legislation and to address legislative gaps in the protections afforded to consumers under existing legislation.
“It will make consumer protection legislation easier to navigate for consumers as well as strengthen their rights and protections. It is also intended that the bill will contain provisions to extend consumer information requirements to contracts beyond their current scope, to include, as appropriate, visible fee schedules for services provided.”
Advertisement
Speaking in the Oireachtas in October, Clare McNamara, a principal officer at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, said the legislation would mean that certain terms can “never appear in a contract” because they are “automatically unfair”. If a contract contains one of these terms “an offence will be committed under the act,” she said.
She said one example of a blacklist term was a clause in a contract that excludes or limits the liability of the trader for death or personal injury “arising from an act or omission of the trader”.
The legislation will also give consumers explicit rights and access to legal remedies when buying digital content or digital services. It is intended that the legislation will allow for people to pursue their rights even if they do not pay in monetary terms for a digital service and instead allow a company to use their personal data as a form of payment.
The bill will set out times by which the provider of digital services, such as broadband, must respond to a customer before the customer will be allowed to ask for a price reduction or to cancel their service.
Additional powers will also be given to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to pursue traders who do not meet legal obligations.
Advertisement
The Fine Gael Labour coalition government had planned to move forward with similar legislation in 2015 but decided to wait to allow the EU to act. However agreement on the EU directives, which this bill will implement, took longer than expected, meaning that the government could only move forward with its proposals this year.