What's the story with the National Consumer Agency?

The head of the National Consumer Agency, Ann Fitzgerald, is in a hurry. On at least six occasions over the course of a biref interview, conducted to mark the agency's first birthday, she complained that change was happening too slowly and admitted that she'd like to have achieved a lot more during her first 12 months in office.

Her impatience is easy to understand. Every day, she and the agency she runs confront misleading pricing, dreadful customer service, anti-competitive behaviour, fraudulent practices, antiquated public services and the bully-boy approach of some companies that seem to believe the customer is always wrong.

At least the NCA is making some progress. Calls to its helpline have doubled to 70,000 a year and Fitzgerald says it is increasingly recognised as the agency which will defend consumers' rights.

"I'd prefer things to move a lot faster but that's life." She insists the agency has shown itself to be a completely different beast to its predecessor, the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA). "We are more willing to push the boat out. The ODCA enforced legislation while we protect consumers."

When asked about the NCA's best moments of the last year, Fitzgerald points to its role in getting Aer Lingus to begrudgingly honour its low, low transatlantic fares last month, and also draws attention to its success in forcing concert promoters MCD to compensate the muddied masses who were left with nowhere to sit at the Barbra Streisand concert last summer.

These were undoubted achievements for the agency, which was formally established last May as part of the Consumer Protection Act 2007. However, critics point out that while headline-grabbing stories might appeal to the Livelineset, they do little to tackle more serious issues faced by Irish consumers.

"I can't help but feel that the NCA are much better at handling PR than what we've had up till now," said one poster to the Pricewatch blog recently. "Didn't they do fantastic work for the wealthy people seeing Streisand? Ever investigated Oxegen, though? I saw the Aer Lingus thing as riding a popularity wave, not an agency giving a damn."

IT DID HAVEsome support. "The NCA is far better than the laughable ODCA," said another poster. "I doubt that MCD would have even staged an internal inquiry, let alone offer refunds in the bad old days of the ODCA. And the NCA's recent supermarket costs survey also gave Tesco, Dunnes et al a lot to think about."

Unsurprisingly, Fitzgerald doesn't believe the criticism is valid. She rejects accusations that she has picked easy-to-win headline-grabbing battles and claims broader lessons can be learned from its recent skirmishes with business. She believes the value of making a formal complaint was perfectly illustrated in the Barbra Streisand affair. Those who complained in writing were reimbursed following the NCA's intervention, while those who just moaned about it at dinner parties and on the radio got nothing.

As a poster to the Pricewatch blog agreed, one of the agency's undoubted successes during the past 12 months was the grocery price surveys. They made for interesting or uncomfortable reading, depending on whether you were a shopper or a retailer.

The studies, published just before Christmas and this spring, showed that there was a very small price difference between Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Superquinn and, to a lesser extent, SuperValu, when it came to a basket of commonly purchased items. They also found that there were real bargains to be found in the aisles of the big discount stores, Lidl and Aldi.

Fitzgerald says follow-up surveys of consumers found that an impressive 17 per cent had changed their shopping habits after reading reports of the price surveys, while a further 18 per cent said they were considering doing so.

Those who had changed, she says, "are saving themselves up to 60 quid a week".

She believes that, while Irish consumers have shown themselves to be too passive over the past two decades, things are beginning to change. "Life is forcing consumers to be more active. Mortgage rates have gone up, food prices are going crazy. The cost of living is really coming home."

She suggests that Irish retailers are "fundamentally in a comfortable place" and, because they are aware of "the passivity of the Irish consumer", don't feel compelled to drop their prices. "There is no imperative to compete on prices rather than just follow each other's prices. Since our study was published, you can see more competition on pricing."

There is one area where the NCA has not had any impact and that is in the ever-increasing gulf between sterling and euro prices. When Pricewatch suggests that the NCA should tackle those retailers who refuse to pass on the benefits of a strong euro to Irish customers, she is quick to point out that the NCA has no control over prices. She says that, in this regard at least, consumers should be willing to fight their own corner.

"There is no doubt in my mind that retailers, particularly those that are based in the UK, are charging what we are willing to pay. I hate to use the term rip-off, but the sterling-euro differential is not now being passed on and the argument about hedging only goes so far," she says. "But there is only one real answer and that is for consumers to make their concerns known to management and then take their business elsewhere.

' PEOPLE NEED TOcomplain and then not buy the products. We have advised consumers who have phoned our helpline about this and they have not been very happy with that response."

She has "mixed views" on the recent decision by the then minister for enterprise, trade and employment, Micheál Martin, not to ban credit-card surcharges as planned. While she says she "hates and abhors" the surcharges, the now-scrapped clauses in the Consumer Protection Act would have also effectively banned some retailers from offering certain discounts.

She concludes by stressing the need to develop a positive relationship with business, too. "We want businesses to recognise that the returning customer is their best customer [and] that they train their staff in how to deal with customer complaints."

She says it is a two-way thing "which will see both businesses growing up and consumers growing up".