Regulator is `anxious to explain' role

LAST May Judge Mary Kotsonouris accepted an invitation from the Director of Consumer Affairs following nomination by Telecom Eireann and the Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications to set up an office of Regulator of Premium Rate Telephone Services.

Her brief also included the preparation of a code of practice for the administration of the services, and the setting up of a system whereby complaints could be investigated. She has done all three, and is "anxious now to get out there and explain".

The long delay in introducing the personal identification number (PIN) and other restrictions has been "frustrating" for her, "unavoidable, but so". She was not informed until November of Telecom's difficulties with some service providers and the prolonged delay this would entail.

She has been assisted by the deputy regulator, journalist Mary Maher, and the former Northern Ireland Ombudsman, Maurice Hayes, who has acted, along with Ms Maher, as a lay assessor.

Judge Kotsonouris has seen all the services providers who would see her, and praised their warm, welcoming and courteous manner towards her. But she complained about their "diffidence and meekness", saying they had allowed "sleaze merchants" to create the public image of their entire industry, which supplies mainly information and entertainment.

She believes the majority providers should form their own trade association to rectify this situation.

The regulator does not have "a moral thing about sex lines". It's just that "the public don't want them". A study she commissioned from Irish Marketing Surveys last December found that 65 per cent felt they "shouldn't be available".

People, she said, are "upset by the flood of sleaze" on these unregulated services which, when combined with unexpectedly large telephone bills, generated outrage "combined with shock".

Last month, at an international meeting of regulators in London, Judge Kotsonouris said she felt that the introduction of her office came "too precipitously". A draft code of practice had been prepared before she assumed the role, which "in some strange way, ranged the telephone company and the regulator on one side as against the service providers".

That was her general impression. A second draft of the code prepared under her "changed its impetus considerably and quite clearly delineated the industry as being the network operator (Telecom Eireann) and the service provider working in conjunction to provide a service".

It was more flexible in structure and gave discretion on many matters to the regulator.

In the speech, she spoke of "a continuous difficulty with regard to my role, even up to the present day. I have had several contretemps with Telecom Eireann arising from their difficulty in understanding an independent mind set which came naturally to me from my many years as a judge".

Insisting there was no "ill will", nor was it "done in a deliberate way", she attributed the difficulty to "a mental block in understanding that a third party, in the role in which I had accepted the appointment, would hold the network operator at an arm's length, not one millimetre nearer than that at which the service providers were held".

Speaking to The Irish Times, however, Judge Kotsonouris was anxious to play down the difficulties with Telecom Eireann, saying it "must have been somewhat difficult for them at the beginning to accept the independence of the role [of regulator].