Mr. Donall O'Keeffe:

To be explicitly clear, we fully supported the introduction of minimum unit pricing and believed it should have happened years ago. The abolition of the groceries order as far as it concerned alcohol was a very bad move at the time and we said so. Multiple retailers have used alcohol as a loss leader and to drive volume sales.

The introduction of minimum unit pricing is a very important step. There are two things to say about our response so far. It only got going this year and we only got going at the end of January. We opened fully on 22 January. The initiative is strategically important in the sense it puts a floor on alcohol pricing. Looking at broad comparisons of the retail price of alcohol in Ireland and in the UK last summer, for example, the scope for our prices to continue to decline was very real. We believe the impact of a floor is therefore very important. The minimum unit price level could be a little higher, but it is very important that policy initiative was taken and we believe it is in the long-term interests of the country, not just the industry.