Competition (Amendment) Act, 1996

Miscellaneous amendments.

11.—(1) The Act of 1978 is hereby amended by the deletion in section 1 (1) of the definition of “monopoly”.

(2) The Principal Act is hereby amended—

(a) in section 14, by the substitution of the following subsection for subsection (7):

“(7) References in—

(a) sections 12 and 13 (1) of the Act of 1978 to section 11 of that Act shall be construed as references to this section, and

(b) the said section 12 to subsections (1) and (5) of the said section 11 shall be construed as references to subsections (3) and (6), respectively, of this section.”,

(b) by the insertion in sections 20 and 21 after “this Act”, in each place where those words occur, of “the Competition (Amendment) Act, 1996, or the Act of 1978”, and

(c) in section 21, by the addition of the following subsections after subsection (3):

“(4) In this section ‘records’ includes, in addition to records in writing—

(a) discs, tapes, sound-tracks or other devices in which information, sounds or signals are embodied so as to be capable (with or without the aid of some other instrument) of being reproduced in legible or audible form,

(b) films, tapes or other devices in which visual images are embodied so as to be capable (with or without the aid of some other instrument) of being reproduced in visual form, and

(c) photographs,

and a reference to a copy of records includes, in the case of records falling within paragraph (a) only, a transcript of the sounds or signals embodied therein, in the case of records falling within paragraph (b), a still reproduction of the images embodied therein and, in the case of records falling within both of those paragraphs, such a transcript and such a still reproduction.

(5) In—

(a) an action under section 6, or

(b) proceedings for an offence under the Competition Acts, 1991 and 1996, or the Act of 1978,

the production to the court of a document purporting to be a warrant or other document whereby the Minister or the Authority appointed, on a specified date, a person under section 20 to be an authorised officer for the purposes of an enactment specified in that section shall, without proof of any signature on it or that the signatory was the proper person to sign it, be sufficient evidence, until the contrary is proved, that the first-mentioned person is or, as the case may be, was at all material times (but not earlier than the date aforesaid) a person appointed under section 20 to be an authorised officer for the purposes of the said enactment.”.