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GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER
Having regard to this aim the Council of Ministers of
the EEC in Dublin in 1972 agreed to a "Preliminary
Programme for Consumer Protection and Information".
The basic aims of this programme were to secure:—
(1) effective protection against damage to health and
safety
(2) effective protection against damage to consumers'
economic interests
(3) adequate facilities for advice, help and redress
(4) the right to information
(5) the right to be heard.
Further to the community's desire to protect
consumers' health and safety, a number of Directives have
been approved by the Council of Ministers including
Directives on additives of food, standards for steering
systems of cars; the list is very long.
Draft Directives
The Commission of the EEC are at work preparing
Directives to protect the consumer's economic interests,
including Directives on consumer credit, in unfair terms in
contracts, on door to door sales, and have passed to the
Council of Ministers Directives on product liability, unit
pricing (to make price comparisons easier) and on
correspondence courses.
How Relevant?
The question may well be asked how relevant to the
Irish market are these Directives, inspired by developments
in rich countries like Germany and France. They are very
relevant according to the Consumers' Association of
Ireland who have urged successive Governments to
develop laws and institutions which reflect modern
trading conditions.
Following pressure from the Consumers' Association,
the Government set up the National Consumer Advisory
Council in 1973; the Council, formed to advise the
Government on consumer affairs, made submissions in
1974 on proposals for legislation to assure the
consumer's interests.
Proposed Legislation
On proposed Consumer Credit Legislation, they
recommended the enactment of new legislation, where
necessary, to protect consumers from their own lack of
knowledge and from abuse from certain traders and
financial bodies.
The Council also considered it necessary to enact
legislation which would control misdescriptions and
provide safeguards against false or misleading
advertising. A bill was drafted taking account of these
proposals and introduced to the last Dáil as The
Consumer Information Bill, 1976; it died with the
dissolution of the Dáil.
A second Bill, the Consumer Protection Bill, 1977,
which incorporated the Council's submissions on the need
to introduce legislation which would afford the consumer
with "effective protection against damage to his economic
interests from defective quality goods", also died.
The Constitution
Practitioners may look aghast at this volume of
legislation, industry may fear these developments as being
unnecessarily restrictive but to the long-suffering
consumer these proposed changes reflect nothing more
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than the State's constitutional pledge, enshrined in the
Constitution, to uphold the economic interests of the
people and to prevent them from being exploited.
CORRESPONDENCE
11 Hume Street,
Dublin 2.
9th September, 1977.
The Editor of Gazette.
Dear Sir,
Certain gremlins seemed to have affected my paper
entitled "Custody, Adulteryand the Welfare Principal",
as published in the July edition of the Gazette.
In my discussion of the Judgment — Parke, J. in
"H.v.H.", the second last paragraph on page 107 in my
typed script read:—
"Whilst religious complications also influenced the
decision reached in this case, Parke, J. made it quite
clear that even if such complications did not exist he
would have awarded custody to the father".
It did not read:—
"Whilst religious differences inevitably also influenced
the decision etc".
In my discussion on the English Court of Appeal
Decision in
Re K. (Minors)
on page 108 of the Gazette,
second paragraph, two sentences that were in my typed
text appear to have been edited into just one sentence and
as a consequence the facts of the case, as set down in the
Gazette are completely inaccurate. The sentence:—
"The mother had an adulterous relationship with M.
and wished to leave the "matrimonial home without the
children",
should not have appeared, but the Mowing
two
sentences,
which read as follows, should have been substituted
"The mother had an adulterous relationship with M.,
and wished to go to live with him. She did not wish to
leave the matrimonial home without the children.
A further error appears in the fourth paragraph of page
108. The first sentence of this paragraph should have
read:—
"An inportant difference between the decision and the
Irish decision discussed earlier is that the English Court
was prepared to grant custody to a parent about to leave
her home to live in an adulterous situation."
In the Gazette the text reads:—
"A parent about to leave her children".
I am afraid that I may be partly responsible for this
particular error as the word "home" was omitted from
my typed text.
Yours truly,
Alan Shatter.