Mr. Padraig Broderick:

I have an independent supermarket in Croom, County Limerick. As such, it is a rural store but it is about ten minutes away from the multiples and discounters. I speak for every retailer in Ireland when I say that our goal is to make a living and to reinvest in our business, as retailers do. Every five or seven years, people will see significant investment in supermarkets and convenience stores, not for vanity purposes but because of wear and tear. Our fridges are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when the shop is closed. There has been a lot of talk in the press in the past week about the cost of groceries and the cost of living more generally, and rightly so. The level of increases we have seen is unprecedented. Things like butter, bread, milk are 50% more expensive than they were four or five years ago. It must be borne in mind that they are also the raw materials that we work with in-store and, obviously, we cannot pass on those increases.

Notwithstanding the pressures we are under from cost increases, retailers are very adaptable. We spend anywhere between 12 and 15 hours on the floor every day, talking and listening to customers. In my own store, I am a butcher, a baker and a chef and a majority of my team can work in each department in the store. We do this not to grow the business but to save it. We have to find ways to keep the business open because the level of increases we are facing in input and employment costs is simply not realistic. This has been borne out recently by the figures we supplied to the Government, which show that the increases have come too quickly without enough thought and research going into them. I know from being on the shop floor in my own business that the word we use every day is "value". Regardless of price increases, we have to offer value. Value does not come in the form of giving jerseys locally or opening later and earlier. Value comes in pounds, shillings and pence. If we do not offer value, we will lose business, lose customers and close down.

Retail has always been competitive. I remember as a child going into Dunnes Stores and watching Maurice Pratt on television. The competition was ferocious and that has not changed. The scars of competition are now all over Ireland. I have been in Limerick for 30 years but when I drive home to Kerry, I go through towns and villages and see shops and filling stations that are closed. It is all over the country. Now we also have online competition, so we have plenty of competition. I would like to think that I am a sharp retailer and that I work hard. I have a great team who have come with me through a banking crisis, through Covid and through an energy crisis. We have done everything we could do. I never thought I would see the day when I would be a butcher, a baker and a chef but I am damn glad that I am, and I am damn glad that my team can row in as well. Four or five years ago, I thought I was ahead of the curve in borrowing for solar panels. I saw it as short-term pain in terms of repayments but, unfortunately, the energy crisis kicked in and bills went from €8,000 to €27,000. Government supports did eventually kick in and were very helpful but I ended up handing over every cent of that support to my energy supplier in order to keep the current running. I was damn glad to have access to that money to be able to do that. Otherwise, I would have gone into arrears, although I ended up in arrears anyway. Thankfully, those arrears are now paid. It was really demotivating to drive home on a sunny day knowing that I was going to paying for something for the next three or four years that was not on the roof but that should have been on the roof. I have recently gone down that road again and have put 95 panels on the roof. Apart from the input and the help it has given my business, it is heartwarming to know it is there and that it will work in the long term.

Unfortunately, I spent €64,000. I do not see any decrease in my bill because there are significant charges on the bill outside of what I am being charged for energy, and that is a sentiment echoed all over the country by retailers who have solar power and do not have solar power. These are difficult times. When I talk about reinvesting in the business, I am currently at the bank because I need to reinvest in my business. In essence, looking forward, I will not have a commercially viable business and now I am trying to convince a financial institution that it is commercially viable. The increases in my employment costs in 2024 and 2025 are equivalent to a second mortgage. They are very close to the cost of the mortgage I currently have.