No cartels prosecuted in five years

dahamsta

Irish Examiner

THE Competition Authority has still not prosecuted a single cartel despite estimates that price-fixing is costing consumers more than 600m euro each year.

The body, established five years ago, received hundreds of complaints over the actions of businesses in 2001 but no cartel proceedings were started.

Yesterday the authority's chief Dr John Fingleton insisted that recent staff appointments meant it was now a position to take a tougher stance on anti-competitive activity.

Its annual report shows it opened files on 222 complaints last year, a rise of almost 40%.

The complaints mostly centre on anti-competitive issues such as market exclusion by dominant firms, refusal to supply services and cartel-style behaviour.

Price-fixing costs Irish consumers around 600m every year, while cartels are estimated to cost the economy anything up to 1bn.

The authority's track record has been slammed as "dire" by a British-based research firm that compared the record of competition enforcers around the globe.

The Law Business Research said the Competition Authority had performed poorly over the last five years and was not doing enough to protect consumers.

Dr Fingleton said the authority had been progressing well and was now ready to vigorously pursue anyone involved in anti-competitive practice.

[...]

dahamsta

White-collar crime must be tackled

The Competition Authority is "well positioned to perform a crucial role in the economy", Tánaiste Mary Harney said yesterday following the publication of the authority's annual report for 2001.

Last year the authority opened files on 222 specific complaints. Some 160 such complaints were made in 1999. That increase over two years hardly warranted the Tánaiste’s description of a dramatic increase.

About a quarter of the latest complaints related the price-fixing, which has been estimated to cost Irish consumers around €635m a year and costs the Irish economy over €1.25bn annually. This is a criminal offence but nobody has been prosecuted for it. Our judicial system is choked by the prosecution of petty crime, while this kind of lucrative white-collar crime has been virtually ignored.

“Competition is one of the key economic tools available to the Government in its fight against inflation,” the Tánaiste said. But there is little doubt this is a fight in which the Government has been faring dismally. Only a few years ago, our cost of living was among the lowest in the European Union. Today, it is among the highest.

Although the Tánaiste cited the so-called dramatic increase in the number of complaints as evidence that both the public and businesses are becoming more aware of the benefits of competition, most of the complaints were made by the public. Until some tangible evidence of progress is produced, people are unlikely to be impressed with the news “the Authority is continuing to vigorously tackle alleged anti-competitive practices in the economy”.

It is supposedly highlighting the importance of competition by participating in “a very large number of conferences and seminars”, as well as publishing papers encouraging greater business compliance with the competition acts.

[...]

Mountjoy Mugger

Did they say how many of these complaints are still marked as "under investigation"? It's a sad indictment of this country to see that five years down the road we're still at square one with it.

By the time they start investigating the telecoms market, we'll all be six feet under.

wormhole

is'nt this just par for the course useless bodies created just to
give the impression that problems are being tackled, vague
legislation that grant little or no powers and jobfillers who
have no interest in excersizing what powers they have.

crawler

Well if it's corrupt system with no policing then the answer is to start our own Cartel!

I can guarantee if you did anything to massively upset Eircom you would be reading a very different report.