 The best way to think about the modern state is it does three things, provide security, redistribute and regulates. The original security thing is the old sort of state of urge to provide security. And now the two big things that it does, that's less important certainly, there's a lot less resources to go into security than used to, and regulation and redistribution are the two big things. They're both very complicated in designing healthcare systems, but regulatory systems are very difficult. Modern markets are extremely complex, we were told about this on lunch, they're becoming more complex, you need more expert knowledge, more specialized knowledge to understand markets, particularly markets without polycopilistic conditions, tend to be extremely difficult to regulate. And here we have four of the main regulators in the country who ground all of these problems all the time, in terms of design, in terms of implementation. So we're going to structure the talk today with each of the participants giving a very quick intro, just to explain what they do, they're making some key points. And then we're going to a quick discussion and open it out to the floor. If you have points, if you have points in the section, the time frame, if you could keep them short, and two points for where you've got a question as well. Okay, so I think we'll go in alphabetical order. So we'll start off with Gary Blaney, Commissioner for Energy Regulation. Thanks very much, Stan. So the question for energy regulation covers electricity and gas, and also we've recently been given a function for water. So we regulate that. I suppose there's two pieces that we regulate, they're quite separate. One is sort of the continental markets. We work with electricity, it's a joint market, so we set the rules for the market, and the market then determines the outcome. And then similarly on retail, then we have a market-based function, so the prices are set by competition. But there's natural monopolies, so this would be the networks, typically electricity, gas, and water. We regulate that and try and be sort of a proxy for competition in those markets, and try to drive good workers from a consumer world to make sure cost matters are there. I might just talk briefly about our group. We have a group of economic regulators, and we sort of share best practice amongst us. So the four of us here are part of that group. I'm currently chairing that group, and what we want to do is just get out the message of best practice economic regulation and raise the profile of economic regulation generally in Ireland. Speaker is Jeremy Gottfried, the commissioner, commit from the commission of communication regulation. Probably. Just use up all the time you didn't take care of it. So what was the risk? No, I'll start with you. What was the risk? Comrade Commissioner for Communications Regulation, we regulate the telecommunications market. We also have a limited role in the postal sector around the universal postal service, so we don't do anything to do with post offices, just the letters. And we see our fundamental role as to make communications markets work in the interests of end users and or society generally. And there are three things that we do that contribute to that role. One is promoting competition. One is promoting investment. And the third is looking after the interests of consumers, making sure that they can use and choose communication services with confidence. It's probably helpful to give a few examples of things we've done so you understand the work we do. So if you take your mind back five, six years ago, there was very, very few people had high-speed broadband in Ireland. UPC, which is now Virgin, but UPC was just getting going and upgrading the cable TV network. And ACOM needed because of the competitive pressure to also start providing high-speed services itself. Our job was to make sure that consumers got choice and also that the investment was able to happen. So we had to set the rules by which companies like Sky and Vodafone could use the ACOM network to provide broadband themselves and bundle it in with their mobile services or their TV services. And we had to set that in a way that there are a number of things. We had to make sure that Virgin or UPC agreed on investing, that ACOM would invest, and that there was an opportunity for people to come in and provide choice. So we set all that. And now we have 70% of the country covered with high-speed broadband. I'll come back to the other 30% in a moment. Another thing we did was we managed the radio spectrum. So now, again, there's a lot of 4G around. About four or five years ago, we ran an auction process to assign the rights of use for the spectrum. So if the people who get the rights of use, we protect them from interference. That's what encourages them to invest in their networks. So as a result of that, again, there was actually quite a lot of money raised for the state. But from our point of view, the main benefit was that the spectrum ended up in the hands of the people who were best placed to extract value from it and deliver value to consumers. And then the third thing I'll say that we do is really looking after the interests of end users. So the products are very complicated. It's very hard for people to compare them. And there's lots of attributes to do with the quality of the product that are very difficult for end users to assess. So we set rules about what information must be provided to end users. We enforce those rules. And increasingly, we're also providing information ourselves. So we'll be providing information about mobile coverage. So you can see coverage maps on provider's websites. Most people take those with a pinch of salt. We'll be providing authoritative information on that kind of thing. So those are the main sorts of things we do. And I suppose just in conclusion, I think you look at what the regulated market has achieved over the last six or seven years at a time of immense financial crisis. Despite the financial crisis, a well-regulated market has brought forth investment which has led to much faster, much better services that has enabled people in Ireland's lives to be transformed in the way they use communication. Okay, thank you, sir. One of the things that your talk raised for me was the issue of short-term consumer protection versus longer-term market efficiency which is ultimately in consumers' interest. But maybe we'll come back to that during the discussion. And that's maybe something that you sort of have to deal with and possibly trade off. So our third speaker is Isil Goghan, the competition consumer protection from the Consumer Competition Protection Commission. Thanks, Daniel. Hi, everyone. Yeah, we're, as it says in the tin, we do competition and we do consumer protection. Our mission statement is to make markets work better for consumers and business. And to break that down, markets have two sides. They have buyers and sellers. The buyers are the consumers. And the consumers are the people who money is going into making those markets work. So we spend a lot of our time and effort ensuring that consumers know their rights in the first place, know what they're entitled to in terms of buying goods, buying services, buying things online, the rights of return, the rights to be given proper information, the rights, of course, for the thing to do what it's supposed to do in the first place. So we have a large consumer information and awareness function which is mainly aimed at empowering consumers to assert their own rights. We don't want to be in the position of an ombudsman who deals with every complaint that comes in because it would just be an impossible task and it would let companies off the hook, frankly, for not vindicating consumers' rights themselves. But we do take some of that information and use it for our enforcement. On the seller side, if you like, there are rules for companies as regards competition, how they're allowed to interact with each other, how they're not allowed to form cartels, they're not allowed to engage in anti-competitive practices, they're not allowed to abuse a dominant position and, of course, they have to vindicate consumers' rights and they have to ensure that those rights are vindicated in the contracts that they offer consumers and in how they deal with them. So that's the basics of what we do. In terms of our priorities for this year, we have a lot going on in terms of cartels and bid-rigging, which is something that's very, very damaging to consumer welfare and to the state. We have structured kind of investigations in vehicle crime. We're doing a lot of work on cars which are being sold to consumers where the cars have either been crashed previously or have been clocked, the odometer has been put back. It's probably the second biggest purchase you're ever going to make in your life, so obviously it's a hugely important thing for consumers. We implement regulations in the grocery goods area which is the relationship between the retailers and suppliers. We're reaching out more towards business in terms of our business compliance function and we've specific investigations going on in price signalling and motor insurance, the transport sector. We're looking at a lot on buying online and how compliant companies are with the consumer rights directive which gives people rights in that situation. We do pricing investigations on a regular basis and we work together with our European partners to look at issues in social media and the sharing economy, things like Airbnb and Uber and so on. Just a quick word before we're going to talk about some specific issues later on in the discussion, but I just wanted to say a little bit about the zeitgeist if you like at the moment, because the times that we live in are very peculiar. They're very unusual, I think. There's a lot of impatience, both among consumers and in the political system with the kind of slow and steady solutions that regulators and the regulatory system is good at coming up with. So the notion that, for instance, variable rate mortgages, the rates are too high, people want an instant solution. They don't want a lot of research done and studies and reports and due consideration. I mean, come out with something that has the right effects in the long term. They want something that works very, very quickly. Allied to that, there's what I would describe as a sort of mission creep, where the solution to everything has to be a regulatory solution. Something's going wrong. Pass a law, make it illegal, and give it to somebody to implement. And that's something that we fear very much for ourselves because we're not sectoral, we're kind of a broad mission across the economy and we feel that that has happened to some extent already and it can happen some more. And that basically dilutes the effectiveness of what you're trying to do in terms of the whole mission. There is this kind of anti-expert thing. We want solutions, we want solutions now. We don't want to listen to big, complicated arguments. Just reduce the price of electricity, for instance, as Theresa May is trying to do in the UK. And then Brexit, which is good to have huge implications for all of us and is very worrying. So that's the downside. What do we have going for us? Well, actually, I think quite a lot. We have a lot of tools that we can use. If we're looking at a market, we can really take a kind of 360-degree look and we can say, is this a structural issue where we might advocate for greater competition or greater consumer rights? Is this an area where consumers have rights and just don't know about it and aren't implementing it? Is it an area where it needs a bit of short, sharp enforcement to concentrate minds and then we can use that as a deterrent for other companies to say, look, these are the rules you have to obey? So tools is one thing. Alliances is another. There's the alliances we have with each other here. But all of us are part of networks at the European level where, frankly, as a fairly small representative, we can learn a huge amount from larger, better-resourced organisations in the UK, which we're sadly going to miss when they leave these networks, but the Germans in the French and also the smaller countries more comparable to us in size. We have a huge connection with consumers and that's the way that we can fight the sort of populist solutions because we know what's on consumers' minds. We get about 40,000 calls a year for consumers with problems. We get upward of 1.7 million hits on the website. We know what things people are searching for. We know what kind of consumer problems they're having. And that's a big resource to us in saying, no, we're concentrating our resources here because we know that that's what matters. And the final thing I would say is the commitment that we have, and I think all of us here would agree, it's the commitment we have from our staff because the kind of work that we do, it's really interesting, it's really engaging, and it's having benefits for consumers right from the start. So you're never in the situation where you have to kind of explain to people why they should come to work in the morning because that's really, really plain to everybody in the organisation. And you know, it's public sector, we've had a lot of problems over the years, we've had pay cuts, we've had, you know, limitations and staff and so on. But that commitment and the mission itself, I think, is one thing that really is the glue that binds the organisation together and that's something that I think I have to mention as the positives in the counterbalance to all the problems that we know exist. Okay, thank you for that. So let's go to our final panelist, who's Michael O'Keefe, who runs the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. Thanks, Stan. Just as brief as possible, the BAI was established under the Broadcasting Act of 2009. It took on the functions of the old Broadcasting Commission of Ireland and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission. The Act was a consolidation of many broadcasting acts, going back to the 1960s. I think the key additional functions were a series of regulatory obligations in respect to public service broadcasters. It's RT and TG Carr. That hadn't been there in the past. There were a number of other new functions as well. We're a non-commercial semi-stead agency, and unlike my colleague, we operate with a part-time board and two statutory committees which look at compliance and licensing. And we're funded by the industry who pay a levy based on their total income. All of our functions are set out in the Act, but we contain them within how we address them is within our three-year strategy statements. I'll just touch briefly on our most recent statement which is concluded in the 2014 to 2016 when there are a number of key findings which are important in terms of the context of us being a regulator. We were perceived by stakeholders as an effective regulator. We were trusted by them as an independent, impartial, fair and proportionate body. There was a view that there is a diverse range of content on radio and television, which is one of our key functions. Although it was reckoned that diversity in radio is probably stronger than television in this jurisdiction, we performed strongly on things like developing codes and standards, holding broadcasts to account and supporting production of content. We run a separate funding scheme for the broadcasting sector. There was more mixed response on things like the plurality in the communications media in Ireland and how we communicate our message and how we increase participation of the public. So having taken all of that on board, we developed and launched our new strategy statement in February of this year. We have five key themes in that. The first one is around promoting diversity and plurality. We also look around excellence and accountability, both as ourselves as an organisation but also within the broadcasting sector that we regulate. We have a theme around communicating and influencing, empowering audiences. We are there to serve audiences, so that's seen as an important dimension to what we do. The final one, which is probably a critical one, and I'll be coming back to it a little bit more, is enhancing innovation and sectoral sustainability, which is seen as one of the big challenges for the sector present. I was just touching on the challenges now and I know Dan would be coming back to these in the course of the discussion, because what the key challenges are going to be for both ourselves as a regulator and indeed the sector that we regulate over the next three to four years. The big one is funding for the traditional linear broadcasters, the traditional broadcasters that you're familiar with. This is as a result of the advertising market downturn, but it hasn't come back, it's actually moved to online, and that's a real challenge for the broadcasting sector. Licence fee, and there was talk at one point of a broadcasting charge which made a lot of sense. The licence fee hasn't moved. There's evasion levels which are quite significant and there's been a lack of an increase over the course of ten years, and that's had an impact on funding for the sector. The second one is around the regulation. There's significant regulation of linear broadcasters, the traditional broadcasters, but now we have the new sectors. We have video on demand, we have video sharing platforms. So how do we regulate those? What level of regulation is appropriate for new services and how relevant are many of the traditional obligations that we impose on our existing broadcasters? Brexit has been a factor. There have been advantages. There have been advantages to Brexit, but equally there are some significant disadvantages, and I can talk about some of those as we move on. And finally, investment in traditional media, and that ties in with our plurality obligation. There was a time 20 years ago when everybody was investing in traditional media. Now there's very little investment in traditional media. The investment is coming from large global groups, the days of the investment by local smaller region groups, that's disappearing. So what impact does that have on the plurality of media that we've got? So there's a whole range of things that are relevant there. So they're the kind of issues that we can touch on, and I'm happy to deal with some of those in more detail. Can I come to you, Garrett, not because we're going through the same, we're not going to go through the same order, but because you probably spoke less than anyone else. A couple of questions about your market, the energy market in particular, has it become more competitive over time? Second one, do you have the tools to regulate the industry side? And that point is all brought up about empowering consumers, but not being an ombudsman. Would you have any thoughts on your position? I suppose we're seeing a lot of sectoral change in the energy specifically. We would like to see more competitive, and I suppose as a regulator there's never enough competition for us, but we'd like to see more. I think there's two sort of fairly fundamental themes that are radically changing the energy sector. One is decarbonisation, and the sort of objective of we should move away from fossil fuels and have a low carbon future. And the second one then is the technology, and I think this is where we would share some of the experiences of fellow regulators that we're seeing, the sort of digitisation of energy, probably much slower than the telecom sector. I think we look across at the telecom sector and we try and foresee that level of change in energy and just what sort of impact that would have. So, I mean, we try to look this through the lens of a consumer. What is this, how do we make sure these changes work from a consumer perspective? Some of this other work has been done about sort of consumer behavioural responses is really helpful and really useful to try and make sure that we don't have some sort of simple regulatory theory about, you know, perfect information by the consumer. We actually try and deal with real people at the other end. So, and this is one of the challenges as a regulator is there's all these competing things. How do you try and get a prioritisation? How do you get a focus? Because otherwise you can run around trying to achieve everything and you get nothing done. I really try and focus in on sort of outcomes, positive outcomes from a consumer point of view that we have sort of a quasi ombudsman function that where, you know, if consumers have complaints, you know, we have a sort of a hot desk there and they can ring in. And again, as this old was saying, having that direct touch with a consumer is sort of useful. You can hear real problems coming back and real issues coming back from consumers which keeps you grounded. It makes sure that we don't just get too caught up and we actually realize, you know, keep reminding ourselves that this is all about the benefit to consumers ultimately. And hopefully that's a sort of a shared experience across us all, really, as regulators. Good. Issa, would you like to comment? And if anybody wants to comment on anything anybody else says, just jump in and feel free. The issue around criminal sanctions, you know, do you feel in your role, do you have the powers that you need? Or do you think that should evolve? I certainly think it should evolve just to set out the issue. Competition law and consumer law are based around criminal sanctions only. That is that if you want to prosecute somebody, you have to go for serious penalties to be imposed. You have to go before a full jury trial. You have to have all the defences that go with criminal enforcement. We do this for hardcore cartels. We just completed a case in the Central Criminal Court, which resulted in two guilty pleas, but they are enormous undertakings. I mean, that investigation, there were over 200 investigative actions, by which I mean taking a statement or a witness interview or a search. There were 41 witnesses lined up, so if it had gone to trial, there would have been 41 witnesses in the Central Criminal Court. I mean, they're just simply enormous. And our feeling is that while that is appropriate for hardcore cartels, which are the most serious and while low-level district court prosecutions may be appropriate for certain other types of breaches, there must be something where companies can face a fine for egregious anti-competitive conduct, which is based on the balance of probabilities. So we would like to have the powers to take cases to court where we could argue on the basis of the civil burden of proof of the balance of probabilities rather than beyond reasonable doubt, which is the criminal standard, because many of these things are, they open up economic arguments, and once you start bringing in economic expert witnesses, you've lost the jury. I mean, our experience is just that it's impossible to prosecute anything other than a very straightforward story of price-fixing or bid-rigging or market-sharing in those circumstances. Now, the weird thing is that I think most people along here have the powers themselves to impose civil fines. We're told that there's a constitutional bar on doing that, but because you're operating within a sector where people are licensed, that that licensing effectively kind of sets up a club, and if you sign up to the club, one of the rules of the club is that you make yourself amenable to the imposition of fines by the regulator. But we're increasingly an outlier, both within Ireland and within Europe, in the sense that we don't have this power, and we just think from the point of view of disincentives to companies for abusive dominance or for anti-competitive agreements short of hardcore cartels, it's something that's really, really missing from our armory. Thank you. Chairman, every time I go to change my phone, I get a list of options that I feel my IQ drops by about 100 points. It's still very high then. No, it goes negative. In terms of empowering consumers, would you like to elaborate on how you work around that piece? I think there are two things that we can do. One is we can make sure that the operators themselves provide consumers with information in a particular minimum set of information. So they are obliged to give consumers what are the main terms and conditions of their contracts and so forth. And then get into things like, say, broadband. If you try to buy broadband, that will probably lower your IQ even more. So all the advertisements for broadband say up to 100 megs, or up to 30 megs, and this is the number that the industry has managed to get consumers fixated on. It's not actually necessarily the number that is the best proxy for how good an experience they're going to get. We've done some research with Esri on the ability for consumers to process all the information. The reason why you're finding it so difficult is I think the research suggests that consumers can understand maybe two or possibly three attributes. But there are in fact many more. So working out what information needs to be provided, having rules that should be provided and enforcing them is very important. The other thing we can do is we can provide, as I say, the independent source of information. So we've operated for a long time a kind of price comparison website which has had, I think, reasonable reviews from consumers and from the other people in the price comparison world. But we want to make that, we want to actually upgrade that so that we're not just telling people about price, we're telling people about attributes. So when you buy your mobile phone, you're interested to know what's the coverage going to be like in your home or on your journey to work. What's it going to be like for voice? What's it going to be like for data? What's it going to be like if you have an iPhone? What's it going to be like if you have a Samsung phone? Because it's different. Your experience will be different. That is requiring us to invest quite a bit in some engineering work, to test out handsets, to model, to gather different sorts of information to be able to do spectrum prediction models to be able to provide that information. But I think making sure that consumers have that information, making sure that they have the right if things change, when people say you signed up for an 18-month contract and then they put the price up after six months, making sure, and you do at the moment, have the right to cancel without penalty within 30 days. Making sure that you are told about that right in a way that you're not distracted by something that looks like a marketing fly that you put straight into the bin. Those are things that we do and we've been very active in taking compliance actions. Unlike us old, we do have the ability to take compliance actions in the civil courts. We don't, like Gareth, have the power to impose penalties ourselves, which is something we would very much like. So we do have the power for some things. We use district court prosecutions where the fines are trivial. So I think the consumer piece is very, very important. The other thing we do is we do have, I think we have 60,000 consumer interactions every year. About 25,000 separate cases of which about 6,000 turn out to be complaints. And actually the proportion of complaints is dropping, which is a good thing because what it means is that the operators are now resolving the complaints themselves rather than having ones that we have to get involved in. But as old said, there's a buy side to the market and there's a supply side to the market. If the people buying in the market don't have the information to make wise choices, they don't have the confidence to make wise choices in the market. There's no point in having competition because then the market won't operate effectively. So the putting together of the competition and promotion and consumer protection, they are actually two sides of the same coin that we see. And we're very glad to have that responsibility. Okay, good. So we're going to open it up.