The Gazette 1977

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

GAZETTE

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.

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 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 130 (4) the right to information (5) the right to be heard.

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.