The State lacked a consumer policy, Fine Gael enterprise and employment spokesman Phil Hogan claimed in the Dáil yesterday.
Its absence, he said, had been brought to the attention of every member of the House. He added that the consumer strategy group, established by Tánaiste Mary Harney to address the issue, had recently attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business.
"We were disappointed with the lack of conviction on the part of the interim board representatives regarding the direction of consumer policy.
"The focus is on one market segment, namely, the grocery trade." Mr Hogan was speaking during the debate on the Investment Funds, Companies and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2005, which passed all stages.
The legislation, he said, had presented an opportunity to put the national consumer agency on a statutory footing.
The interim board had been established without a representative of the Consumers Association of Ireland, which had a member on the group established to review consumer policy.
The association had made a major voluntary contribution to the promotion of information and good ideas to amend consumer law to make it more palatable to the consumer.
All TDs, said Mr Hogan, had been lobbied about the over-regulation which applied to a number of facets of company law.
"The issues of compliance statements, the regulatory environment, the changes to the groceries order and the need to establish an independent national consumer agency are important, but all that has been done is provide for a modest amendment to the fines appropriate to the Restrictive Practices Act 1982 and the Sale of Goods and Services 1978."
He said that while he welcomed increases updating fines set 30 years ago, an opportunity had been missed to implement an appropriate consumer protection policy and establish a national consumer agency.
Labour spokesman Brendan Howlin said Ireland was a vulnerable economy because it was open and needed to be extremely competitive. It had slipped in the competitive stakes in the past two annual assessments.
"We should not be complacent if we are to maintain the prosperity of the past decade." Mr Howlin said that during the Reagan era in the United States one million new jobs were created, but one citizen had remarked that he needed three of them to live.
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Noel Treacy said the recommendations of the consumer strategy group were under consideration by a high-level interdepartmental committee, which would report back to the Government with a detailed implementation plan within three months.
