Enterprise:A big rise in spending on consumer affairs and increased resources for the Competition Authority are provided for in the Estimates of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
Minister Micheál Martin welcomed the increase of 4.6 per cent in the department's budget. He was sharply criticised, however, by Siptu president Jack O'Connor over the department's failure to allocate additional resources to its labour inspectorate.
The allocation for the Competition Authority for 2006 has been increased by 15 per cent, or €738,000, to €5.831 million.
Mr Martin said this would enable the authority to double resources in its cartel enforcement division and allow it to substantially increase the number of investigations it can carry out into criminal breaches of the Competition Act.
"The increased allocation will help to demonstrate to consumers that real change is under way," he said.
The authority welcomed the extra resources. "Price-fixing or other types of cartel behaviour is nothing more than theft by businesspeople looking to make extra profits at the expense of their customers," director of the authority's cartel division Ted Henberry said yesterday.
Spending on consumer affairs will rise by 76 per cent, with an extra €3 million devoted to the interim board of the newly created National Consumer Agency.
Overall, the department's budget is to increase by €76 million to €1.726 billion.
Mr Martin said the enforcement of employment rights would continue to be a priority for his department next year.
Since the introduction of the national minimum wage in 2000, the Government had increased the number of labour inspectors from a base level of 10 to 31, he said. "The department's administrative budget for 2006 includes the full-year cost of 11 additional posts in the labour inspectorate which were filled in 2005."
Mr O'Connor, however, criticised the Government's "complacency" on the issue.
"Amid all the self-congratulation with which the Government's expenditure estimates have been released, the Minister for Finance did not see fit to announce any new allocation for the labour inspectorate," he said, and Mr Martin had "declared himself content with that fact".
The trade union movement had been calling throughout the year for immediate employment of at least 75 inspectors, Mr O'Connor added.
He claimed Government "passivity" on the issue "continues to give the green light to a race to the bottom in labour standards".