Description
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Private Enforcement of Competition Law in Ireland by David McFadden
Competition is recognised as a key driver of growth and innovation. Competition ensures that businesses continually improve their goods and services whilst reducing their costs. Anti-competitive conduct such as price-fixing causes harm to the economy to business and to consumers with small businesses and consumers ultimately paying the price. An effectively implemented and enforced competition policy is therefore essential to a market economy; thus the EU ECB and IMF included a number of competition specific conditions in the terms of Irelands recent financial bailout. Both Irish and EU law recognise the right for parties injured by anti-competitive conduct to sue for damages but private actions for damages in Ireland are rare. Taking as his starting point the European Commissions initiative on damages actions for breach of the EC antitrust rules the author asks what the purpose of private competition litigation is and questions why there has been a dearth of this litigation in Ireland. While examining the Irish law on anti-competitive conduct in detail the book also proposes a number of reforms of the law to enable and encourage private competition litigation and compares the position in Ireland to that currently found in the UK and US.