Mr. Vincent Jennings:

I welcome the opportunity afforded to the Convenience Stores and Newsagents Association, CSNA, by the committee to assist it in understanding further the challenges that face in particular those of us in the subsector of the retail trade, namely, the convenience, forecourt and newsagents sector. I am accompanied by Mr. Derek Moran, a retailer in Drogheda and a member of the CSNA national executive, and online by Ms Flora Crowe, a CSNA member from Sixmilebridge, County Clare. Many of our members are second- and third-generation shopkeepers and have managed to remain in business throughout the most difficult and trying times. We are not quitters or moaners. Although we compete in what is acknowledged to be the most competitive sector in Irish business, our members continue to serve their communities in the certain knowledge that they are appreciated and respected. While a number of the challenges we face today are similar to those we faced 30 years ago, such as access to finance, unfair commercial terms from suppliers, planning, parking and, in urban areas, antisocial behaviour, today's retailer is further burdened by an ever-increasing number of legal and regulatory obligations: enormous increases in public liability insurance, a highly erratic rateable valuation process, and, especially of concern to customer-facing service businesses, an ever-increasing payroll cost. For members who do not own their premises, the relationship between tenant and landlord is fraught with difficulties that extend well beyond upward-only rents and include having to negotiate and sometimes re-negotiate with vulture funds and institutional investors.

All of those challenges pale into insignificance when compared with the most recent threat - the cost of electricity and gas necessary to run our businesses. While all businesses will incur additional costs, those of us in a sector that must have refrigeration, electric motive power, lighting, heating, and cooling facilities will suffer the greatest pain in the form of bills that are 300% to 350% in excess of similar periods last year. Despite every store owner taking additional energy-saving measures, which lead to a modest reduction in comparative consumption, we still have the appalling reality that a two-month bill that was €6,500 last year is €22,000 this year. These are viable businesses that are incurring a series of increases to their cost base that they cannot possibly sustain. These are businesses that have carried out Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, energy audits over recent years and quite frequently have been able to avail of the accelerated capital allowances to ensure they were able to run their businesses in an energy-efficient and environmentally responsible way. These businesses cannot be permitted to wither on the vine due to the actions of a Russian bully.

The association does not wish to be critical of the initiatives the Government has put in place, particularly the TBESS, which is reported to have a €1.25 billion fund underpinning it, but the delay in implementation and the stated commencement date of September fail to pay sufficient attention to the urgency of the crisis. All Deputies and Government Ministers were aware from early 2022 that the Ukraine invasion had caused seismic shocks to the cost of electricity and gas for domestic and commercial customers. Once their annual contracts finished, our members were unable to renew them and had to accept a default unit price which was ratcheting upwards weekly and sometimes daily. It will be necessary to provide for a rebate to those customers that can demonstrate these additional costs incurred earlier than September. With the greatest of respect, providing a 40% rebate on bills as large as many our members have received still leaves them with an unsustainable and mounting drain on their cash flow. While we know that the present crisis is grounded in the unit price being charged, it needs to be acknowledged that our collective reliance on fossil fuels must be reduced and, ideally, eliminated. Energy companies profiting significantly from the situation need to be repositioned in the national interest and charged with facilitating sustainable energy to all of their customers' properties on a commercial basis.

CSNA represents more than 1,500 retailers which employ in excess of 45,000 people in their stores.

The overwhelming majority of our members were designated to be essential service providers and as such remained open throughout the Covid-19 restrictions. Many of our members ensured delivery of vital supplies to those customers in their community that were cocooning.

This committee has asked the CSNA to discuss the challenges facing small businesses. As it is primarily interested in enterprise, trade and employment, the remainder of our written submission will focus on these areas, with particular reference to recent, suggested and proposed legislation that will, we submit, affect our members disproportionately. We are concerned that the combined increased costs our members will incur over a relatively short timeframe in implementing a series of changes will render many of their businesses unprofitable. For all of us, payroll is by far the greatest single business cost. The recent statutory sick pay scheme will affect our businesses differently from others for which service is not a prerequisite or where the employee numbers are sufficiently large that absences can be accommodated without substitution. Members of this committee had been made aware of the double whammy by the association but we will await a review of the Act before restating our view that a rebate mechanism for both medical fees and a proportion of the sick pay should be contained in the scheme.

The committee met recently with the Low Pay Commission on the subjects of the national minimum wage recommendation and its report on the living wage. As a former low pay commissioner for two three-year terms, I must advise the committee that the commission will not be able to earn the confidence of employers unless there are significant improvements in data capture given the total absence of capability at present.

A further challenge to our small businesses will come in the shape of the mandatory 6% employer's contribution outlined in the auto-enrolment proposals. We are not so naïve to believe that our employees will not wish to incorporate some or all of the cost of their pension into wage claims which will, in turn, be an additional overall cost. A convenience store with ten participating employees with a combined annual payroll of €285,000 will incur an additional €17,000 in pension contributions. How are these increases in sick pay costs, potential living wage costs and auto-enrolment costs to be funded by small businesses that are already struggling to make a profit commensurate with the risk involved? If this committee is really interested in learning about our challenges, it needs to accept that the interests of larger businesses represented by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, IBEC, are not always similar to, and are sometimes quite different from, those of small and medium sized enterprises. We are aware the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment has continually rejected the idea of including the Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association, ISME, in the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF. We remind the committee of the long-established principle that employment agreements need to be accepted by a majority of those affected.

We welcome today's engagement and commit to an open discussion. We ask that the committee see this as the beginning of a process of learning and dialogue rather than a mere optic.