Fewer than 25 per cent of shoe shops were fully compliant with footwear labelling regulations when the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs conducted a spot-check in recent months.
"Prosecutions will follow if traders continue to flout their legal obligations," the director, Ms Carmel Foley, said yesterday.
Retailers could be fined €1,905 for each breach of the Footwear Labelling Regulations 1996.
Retailers and manufacturers are obliged to have the materials used in footwear labelled. The labelling must show if the uppers, lining and socks and outer soles are made from leather, coated leather, certain textile materials or other materials.
The labelling can be in written form or by means of a small drawing but if a pictogram is used, the retailer must carry a notice explaining in written form what the drawings mean.
The regulations are in place so that customers know what they are buying and get value for money, a spokeswoman for the director said yesterday. Some shoes appeared to be made of leather but were in fact a cheap imitation, she said.
The rules also ensured that customers with an allergy to a certain material did not buy that material unknown to themselves.
The survey of 226 outlets found that just 23.5 per cent had fully complied with the regulations. The other shops either had some unlabelled footwear on sale, or did not display the required explanatory notice where footwear was labelled by way of pictograms.
Just one shoe in every pair needs to be labelled.
The survey found that the worst offenders were in the sportswear sector where 37 per cent of the pairs of footwear examined were unlabelled.
Ms Foley said the offending stores had "dramatically improved" their compliance levels, following the intervention from her inspectors.
All non-compliant premises were later revisited and only 12 per cent of those were still not fully compliant. Some 9 per cent of footwear across all ranges remained unlabelled.
Ms Foley said her office was now following up those cases.
The survey had raised traders' awareness of the Footwear Labelling Regulations and their obligations to comply with them," Ms Foley said.
"The ultimate beneficiaries are the consumers, who, as a result of having the necessary information relating to the composition of the footwear readily available to them are in a better position to judge if they are getting the best value for their money," she said.
A summary of footwear labelling regulations is available on the director's office website at www.odca.ie
