Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I am greatly heartened by the emphasis on retail in Mr. Cullinan’s presentation. I take great heart when I see the IFA taking on the retailers and, particularly, the discount multiples. Everybody in the Government and everybody in every political party wants to see cheaper food prices and it is very important. However, it is set out there very succinctly in the consumer price index, CPI, over the past ten years that there is only one loser in cheaper food prices and, unfortunately, that is the producer at the moment.

I have a couple of questions on this. Clearly, we need to do more legislatively to support farmers, and the IFA has certainly set out some of that. The Government and the political parties need to stand shoulder to shoulder with the IFA on this issue. We need to take on the supermarkets and multiples. They have to be accountable. They have been very adept and successful at their marketing and they have certainly presented an image that they are a friend and are putting a warm embrace around rural Ireland. However, when one looks at the stark figures, that is certainly not the case. They need to be challenged. I am very supportive of any effort by the IFA to take the fight to them. I am interested to tease out where the IFA sees we need to go in terms of legislative support. Certainly, the food regulator is very important. The UTP has its shortcomings, and I suppose for Mr. Malone in particular, we would have seen the legislation on alcohol pricing recently. From my own discussions with small retailers, they would say that while it was not necessarily the aim of that legislation, it has levelled the playing field and the multiples cannot do the huge discounts that they were able to do. Suddenly, the corner shop off-licence is able to compete head-to-head with Dunnes Stores on the price of a bottle of whiskey. Do we need to get to a model like that? Is that where we need to get to in terms of food production and food retailing?