Ms Yvonne O'Meara:

I thank the Senator. I am a proud second-generation retailer. Our SuperValu retail shop has been operating on Portumna for over 45 years. It was set up by my late parents Marie and Donie and I subsequently took over 13 years ago. We are the second biggest employer in our community. I am very proud to say that, remarkably, we have given over 1,700 people their first job. These are people who are in school or in college and we are really setting them up for their next career. As a SuperValu retailer, we are also really proud to give to the community. We sponsor an awful lot of local teams. During the storm in late January, a lot of people who came into the shop had no electricity. We had a man in our boardroom on a nebuliser and we had people feeding bottles to their babies. That is what we do. We are community based.

I am very conscious of the pressure on everyone when they are coming into the supermarket. We are doing everything we possibly can to keep our grocery prices low and their bills low but it is a difficult time to be a retailer. Our margins are very low and we have huge cost inputs. Our day-to-day input costs have risen significantly, including our energy and insurance costs. Our labour costs are up 30%. Every time we get our bills, we wonder how we will pay them. On Saturday last, we were looking forward to a good trading day but the local bridge broke. I had staff in the shop, with a few extra in because the weather was due to be good, but for four hours nobody could get in from Portumna. I still had all of these costs to pay but I could not trade as I would have liked to trade.

We were speaking about retail crime a few minutes ago. Right across the whole of Ireland, it is a big issue. It is not people who cannot afford to put food on their table but criminal gangs that are coming in and stealing to order. It is very upsetting for me when I am wondering what is going on in my business and I get somebody aggressive coming at me. I have a wonderful team in Portumna and a wonderful community and customers and I have to do my best to ensure their safety.

The main ask for me of the Government is to consider a PRSI scheme. As I said, we employ a huge number of people in our stores. I would like to see scaled-up measures for energy costs. I spent €150,000 on solar panels but I am not going to get a payback because the price of energy has risen. Two weeks ago, in my bakery, two machines broke down. I now have to find €30,000 to replace them because if I do not, I will lose out to my competitors. Consumers are very savvy and they have a number of choices of where to shop. I would also like to see an increase in financial support for local gardaí. The gardaí in Portumna and in the whole of Ireland are wonderful but they need support to tackle retail crime.