No, it is genuine. I drove to Sligo at the weekend and watched the prices on the way. One will find people who take advantage. I saw two or three garages in a town all charging the same price while ten miles down the road there was a very big difference. However, people have to drive that distance.
Enforcement is very important. Our enforcement powers are much wider than before and we will use them more extensively as time goes on. I talked about my gratitude to the people in the agency. We are changing how we enforce because we need to maximise the people we have and get the most from what they are doing. In old DCA, Director of Consumer Affairs, days there was a very public focus on price display and convictions. For every complaint to the agency, inspectors went out to the shop, whether it was large or small, and visited it two or three times. As a senior manager of a team we much prefer inspectors to go to a shop having given a written warning and issue an on-the-spot fine. We have inspectors tracking down car clocking, looking at potential mis-selling in the furniture industry and doing the leg-work for the surveys. We are broadening out how they do their business so we get the best from them.
This year we received 330 complaints about price display issues. This could be for a small corner shop or a large shop. We write to the shop, tell it we have received a complaint and ask it to fill in an assessment form. Approximately 60% return these forms. Those that do not will receive a visit from us. If there is a problem they will receive an on-the-spot fine of approximately €300. Those that fill in the form may or may not receive a visit, so we have a risk-based approach. We have approximately 95% compliance in Ireland. There is no point in giving all our resources to an area in which there is 95% compliance. That is not how one runs a business. We are doing a major element of public sector reform in the agency and we are getting the most from what we have. We are building up to our 80 people and we have a very strong vision for what we should have in Ireland. However it will take time. One cannot overturn 20 years of an inherited poor consumer voice in one, two or five years.
Members must remember we are doing our business differently. In 2007 we had 13 prosecutions and in 2008 we have had three. However we have issued 16 fixed payment notices. We have a very valuable tool called an undertaking, which some media people have not understood. We have used this new enforcement tool recently in the case of a car dealer in Limerick who had clocked cars. Once we find, for example, that somebody has clocked a car, it enables us, having investigated it, to ask him or her to agree to a formal undertaking that he or she will not do it again and will compensate those who bought clocked cars. If the person agrees to that we will ensure the customers receive the compensation and continue to monitor the seller. The alternative is to spend months preparing a court case and wait for it to get to court while the seller is still clocking cars and the customers may not get any redress. We are trying to use all the tools we have in the most efficient way possible so we can sort a problem and move on to the next one.
Approximately a year ago we did research on the problems experienced by young people buying their first home when they bought apartments. It became clear they had no clue how the system worked. This was at the height of the property boom, and in a way they did not care because they had to get on the property ladder. Over ten years all these problems were building up with this new form of communal living where people did not understand how the system worked and the service charge quoted was often a come-on rate which doubled the following year. In addition, management companies, which are grown-up residents committees staffed by ordinary people, not professional directors, were having problems with the builder who ran them initially and the property management agent.
We did a great deal of research on multi-unit developments and published a guide for consumers. The new property services regulatory authority being established will play a role but it became clear that this will take time. Meanwhile thousands of ordinary young people out there have major problems. We established a forum I had hoped would have completed its work within five or six months. I am learning that such work takes longer. We will have the outputs of that next month. While they will not change the world, they will be useful for people who live in those developments, are thinking of buying into them and the residents committee, which is the management company in its dealings with the property management agent, which it will need to run the business for it. We receive many complaints. We sought complaints in the beginning because we wanted to get a good feel for what this place is like and what the problems are.
The issues we have with the airlines revolve primarily around unfair terms. We are taking legal advice. If we do not reach a resolution with them we will probably have to go to court and allow the court to decide whether a term is fair. We are doing much work in the leisure industry. I would like us to have a handle on every sector that affects consumers so we can see trends coming down the line. That will happen over time.
The gym sector is growing and people waste money - I have done it myself - signing up to gyms and never going back. There has been a serious issue in terms of what we would call unfair terms and conditions in the sector. We have negotiated fair terms with one major player and we are finalising them with five others. We are producing guidelines for the hundreds more around the country. This is an area of consumer detriment for people spending €700 or €800 per year on it.
What really drives us is finding the areas of greater consumer detriment and where the biggest loss to consumers is. That is why, for example, the study we commissioned of the construction sector from a consumer perspective is so important. We do not yet know the final outcome, which will be published in the autumn, but a house is a person's biggest purchase. We must ensure consumers' rights are protected.
As I mentioned we have a call centre in Cork, taking some 70,000 calls, or double what we had two years ago. The number will be around 90,000 this year. Approximately 95% of those calls seek advice, which we give, and 5% would potentially lead to enforcement action. It is proving to be a super tool for us in terms of research of the areas where consumers are experiencing most problems and what companies cause most problems. We can focus more on those.
For example, I was asked to address the Society of the Irish Motor Industry AGM two weeks ago. I was very straight with it and raised the matter of us receiving 4,500 calls about the motor sector in the past six months. That is unacceptable and we must act on it. We are using all the information we get to do so. Our website, call centre and everything else we do work together to maximise our efforts for consumers.
That is genuinely what drives us. We carried out market research in Galway last year and I have never forgotten what a particular working class woman said to us. She said she did not have much money and that all she wanted was a fair deal, no more and no less. I would add to that statement that it should be available, preferably, with a smile. We do not want extras, just what we pay for.
