Competition is the key to protecting consumers' interests, the Tánaiste tells Denis Staunton in Davos.
The Tánaiste, Ms Harney, hopes within the next two weeks to appoint members to a new board to advise the Government on consumer issues and to promote consumer rights.
Speaking yesterday in Davos, where she is attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Ms Harney said the board would not be a statutory body but would be modelled on the Motor Insurance Advisory Board (MIAB).
"We don't have a well-developed consumer lobby in Ireland, even though we are all consumers. I'm hoping to appoint a small group to advise me on consumer issues and to provide a national voice for the consumer, independent of vested interests," she said.
The MIAB was set up to review all factors affecting the cost of motor insurance and to provide advice and recommendations to the Government.
Ms Harney said competition was the key to protecting consumers' interests and that the consumer protection board could identify areas where insufficient competition was affecting consumers.
The Tánaiste expressed the hope that Ireland's EU Presidency could succeed after 14 years of EU negotiations in finding agreement on a single European patent. At present, separate patents are required in each member-state, putting European innovators at a disadvantage.
"It's 20 per cent cheaper in America to have a 20-year patent. I hope we can get political agreement on this in the next few months," she said.
The dispute over the single European patent centres on the issue of language, with some countries wishing that applications should be possible in any European language while others believe that only English should be used. The Irish Presidency is hoping to find agreement to allow applications to be made in English, French or German.
Ms Harney said the Lisbon Process, which aims to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world by 2010, went to the heart of European citizens' interests and she denied that the public failed to understand it.
"The public understands employment. The public understands unemployment. We have 8 per cent unemployment in the EU and 15 per cent in the new member-states. 400,000 European graduates in science and engineering are working in the US. As long as these trends continue, we won't succeed in reaching our goal," she said.
The Tánaiste insisted that the Government was taking the right measures to ensure that Ireland would continue to attract foreign direct investment.
"We have to continue to invest in human capital and we have to keep taxes low. There shouldn't be lower levels of foreign direct investment. Ireland's inward flow of investment increased last year from €19 billion to €41 billion. Clearly, we won't be getting investments with large job numbers because they tend to be focused on manufacturing," she said.
The Tánaiste will host a meeting of high-level EU experts in Dublin next week to discuss how to boost the role of the EU Competitiveness Council, which she will chair for the next six months. She said that, unlike Ireland, many EU governments did not have a single ministry dealing with competitiveness and she expressed the hope that the next European Commission would unite competitiveness issues within a single portfolio.
Ms Harney acknowledged that the Stability and Growth Pact hindered bigger spending on infrastructure improvements but she backed the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, in his resistance to an early reform of the pact. Mr McCreevy, with the support of most EU finance ministers, favours a period of reflection before opening any new debate on reform.
"During Ireland's Presidency we will not be promoting a national agenda and that is how it should be," Ms Harney said.
