It took five years to draft. But now everything’s go!-go!-go! First published late spring 2014, Ireland’s newest competition law reform could be adopted by July. And though planning was long and time for debate is now short, last minute changes (big ones too) continue. Just introduced amendments include new merger control thresholds. Other surprises include longer merger review periods and extraordinary new investigative powers: repeat summary detentions, all-night interrogations, and forced seizure of legally privileged material, to name a few. Are there also, buried in the whopper 100-page bill, changes that diminish accountability and independence of Ireland’s new enforcement agency (the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission or CCPC)?
From Acorn to Oak
Merger of Ireland’s Competition Authority and National Consumer Agency was first announced on 14 October 2008. The publicly-stated policy objective was cost cutting; – part of a “rationalisation plan for State agencies” (a.k.a., Ireland’s bonfire of the quangos) to yield, the previous Minister said, synergies and efficiencies. Why it then took five years to publish legislative proposals to implement this policy objective is not clear. New laws to implement EU/IMF bailout commitments doubtless took Government priority. But an apparent policy change on the scope of reforms may also have contributed: in 2011, the Minister told lawmakers that the draft legislation had become an “all-encompassing” bill. A consolidated and updated competition law seemed to be on its way. (Since adoption, Ireland’s 2002 statute has been subject to piecemeal reform via ten amendments, including multiple financial emergency statutes.) Later, however, for reasons not publicly explained, less ambitious changes seem to be have been preferred. By publication date (31 March 2014), little was known publicly what was on the cards.
Read the full article here: If it Ain’t Broke, Fix it: Ireland’s Competition Law, Version 2014