Brian McHugh

That can range from fixed payment notices to compliance notices, right up to prosecutions.

So we might take up to, it depends on the year, up to 10 prosecutions in any year.

So recently, you may be aware we've had prosecutions against Tesco's, against Boots, against Brown Thomas, Lifestyle Sports.

And yesterday we had the prosecution against Quills.

So we're very active in the area and we're very reliant on consumer contacts.

So we really do encourage them.

Oh, absolutely.

So in many, many of the inspections we do, it results in a different enforcement outcome other than a prosecution.

But obviously for a prosecution that goes before court, there's a significant amount of due process.

The parties need the opportunity to provide their side of the story.

The evidence needs to be collected and presented in a fair way to the court.

So it can take some time, understandably, to make sure that that process is fair before it gets to court and before it is a decision of the courts.

I mean, what I would say is that generally the system that's in place where a prosecution goes in front of the district court and the prosecution is around a specific item.

So the two jumpers in this case.

So, you know, we understand how the outcome in this case can be a 500 euro fine.

But we're very much on the record as saying that more generally, where we see cases where there's breaches of consumer law that affect sometimes millions of consumers, and the amounts can be in many, many millions in terms of the amount that consumers are spending.

in places where we see breaches of consumer law, we absolutely want to see the ability to hire fines which match the breaches of the law that we see.

So the punishment must fit the crime.

And currently there's not a system in place, in our view, to achieve that.

Recently, we really welcome government proposals to have legislation to give us, the CCPC, fining powers where we see breaches of the law.