Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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I was not here for Ms Tacon's presentation but I read it, and it was interesting. The GCA has had significant success under the grocery supply practice code it introduced in the UK. That is obviously important. I am interested in how retailers interacted with the GCA in investigations. Regarding the competition authority in this country, in order to provoke an investigation the complainant must submit first-hand evidence, including affidavits and everything else. There is, therefore, a barrier to participation in those types of investigations in this country, which means they do not get off the ground. If they do get off the ground, people are very fearful and there is a fair degree of apprehension. How would Ms Tacon suggest we might overcome this, from her experience of dealing with this type of thing?

What statutory powers does the GCA have? Let us say it were to investigate me. It seems to work on the basis of working matters out in a mutually accepted way with the suppliers or retailers it deals with in the UK. Many of them seem to react to the GCA positively and they co-operate. Let us say I became a recalcitrant supplier or retailer. How would the GCA deal with me? What statutory powers would it have to deal with me? How successful is the invocation of the arbitration between suppliers and retailers? If the GCA got wind of the fact that there was a cartel operating in an industry somewhere, how would it set about investigating it?

Much of the evidence here is anecdotal, but there is real evidence. I know Ms Tacon is not touching this, but nevertheless this is the big cry here. We have had a lot of unrest about it for the past decade and a half but it culminated in recent events. We have one particular industry with four or five big players. How does Ms Tacon cope in cases in which there are big players within an industry? How does she try to sort those out? It is very easy when there is a small cohort of people, whether corporate entities or individuals, controlling an industry. There may be three, four or five, or perhaps one very big one. How would Ms Tacon deal with someone like that operating within an industry in which the casualties are the primary producers? I know she does not deal with primary production and is not down to that level.

Perhaps Ms Tacon does not deal with this type of thing, but regulations on unfair trading practices are being introduced at European level. If they were introduced in this country this evening, they would not come quickly enough. We are very eager that regulation in this area be widened in this country. Has Ms Tacon looked at the unfair trading practice regulations that will come on stream from Europe? I know that the UK will leave the EU if Mr. Johnson ever gets Brexit done, but in that situation I am sure Ms Tacon will still keep abreast of developments in the wider European context. There is the unfair trading practice regulation. I wonder about cases in which there is a significant imbalance between the bargaining power of the retailers and the effectively weak power of primary producers. We have primary producers who are basically farmers. They deal with perishable products - milk, meat and vegetables - so they are going into suppliers and they do not have any choice. There are people here producing vegetables costing a lot of money, but then we see the supermarkets selling 1 kg of carrots for 5 cent or something, which is totally mad, but that is the type of behaviour that goes on in this country. How would Ms Tacon stop that? How would she even attempt to stop it so as to achieve a fair standard of living for the people involved?

I will give Ms Tacon an example. She is probably aware of this and has probably read up on it before coming here, but the impact of unfair trading practices in Ireland on the primary producer is very serious because the primary producer gets, on average, 21% of the cost of the product and the retailer gets 51%. That speaks for itself. The primary producer knows he or she will never get to the point at which there will be a perfect balance. However, in order to get some degree of balance, some element of price and a throwback to the primary producer to give him or her an opportunity to survive, from Ms Tacon's experience of dealing with the grocery trade, what would she suggest we could do in this country to try to bring some degree of equity into that chain? I know the question is a bit unfair. Is Ms Tacon applying for a renewal of her job in 2020? She is not. There we go - she should be free to speak. Perhaps she could help us. Perhaps she could come over and get the job here. We have been talking about this problem for some time and have been very cowardly about tackling it.