Ms Christine Smith:

I would say there are different kinds of pressure. The pressure to which I think the Deputy is referring - namely, that from the larger operators - does exist. I would look more at the pressure we were put under last year following the budget for 2013, published on 5 December. We were put under pressure to source cheaper products because the average price of a bottle of wine, as Mr. Pennington noted, is €7.50. We were hard pushed in this regard to find product we could sell to the retailer that could be on the shelf selling at €7.50, because we have certain quality values in our company. The pressure did not come so much from the direction mentioned in the Deputy's question; it was about finding a product that has good enough quality which we are happy to sell, so it arose from the pressure of the tax.

The excise duty is crippling everybody and we are in the middle of it. We are the people who actually have to pay it initially, who finance it. That is quite challenging, as members can imagine if they consider that every 1,000 cases of wine we sold this time last year cost us €23,600 in excise duty. What we remove from bond in month one we pay for just before the end of month two, when the Revenue Commissioners takes it by direct debit through the bank. There is no way out of that. In order to sell a product we need to know we will have the money in two months' time to be able to continue withdrawing from bond. In order to do that we have had to tighten the credit terms we impose on the independent off-licence sector. We do not have a choice about it because we are stuck in the middle. It is not about making extra profit but about sustaining our own businesses.