Ms Breda Cahill:

As Ms Clancy stated, I share a back wall with a German discounter. Times are tough out there and we must compete. Consumers want nothing but value for their buck because they do not have many bucks to spend this weather. It is as simple as that.

Deputy Ó Cuív raised a question about our purchasing and what we buy. We would buy probably up to 95% of our produce from Musgrave because, on my own, I would have no hope of being able to compete nor would I have any sort of buying power. The bigger companies would not even want to know Breda Cahill. I am a small fish in a very big pond.

I have three stores. At present, I employ 74 staff. At the height of the boom, we would have employed nearly 125 staff. We support local. We are in the heart of our communities. We live there, we breathe there and everything is there. Without our retail partnership with Musgrave, its integrity and the way it does its purchasing, I would not be here today. In a nutshell, I would not be able to exist.