Its that time of year. What presents do people want and one of the laziest presents on the market is the Gift Card. It's a welcome gift and most people appreciate the thought. but most gift cards have an expiry data, The Consumers Association of Ireland have launch a new campaign to outlaw expiration dates on these cards and many people forget to buy a product with the card and after months of inaction from them they find their gift card is worthless. The CAI have launched a campaign to get the government to move on this issue, Credit Where it's Due, hopes to make government and the retail industry insure consumers get value for their gift cards. Social Democrat co-Leader, Catherine Murphy want to see this issue resolved under her new consumer bill.

ComReg have announced the total amount spend on telecommunications by Irish consumers up to July 2017. Irish consumers spent over 3billion euro on TV, broadband, mobile phones, mobile data, text messaging and voice calls. Both Text Messaging and Voice Calls saw a decrease in use with just 1 hour and 10 minutes of voice calls per month and 28 text messages, however mobile data use was up 75% to 4.1GB per month with the rise of free Voice over IP apps and text services.

According to credit card company VISA Irish consumer spending is up 2.5%, and has overtaken March as the fastest increase in spending. July saw an increase of 1.8% from June.