Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

General Scheme of the Agricultural and Food Supply Chain Bill 2022: Discussion

Mr. Se?n Murphy:

As Mr. McHugh stated, we had many supports, such as corporate and communication supports, which were deployed in other areas that were functions of ours. It is difficult to see how that will align. What I can say is that once the compliance, monitoring and enforcement was passed to the consumer protection division, we had staff dedicated to this issue. At different times, they performed this function in addition to their other tasks. The consumer protection division has significant experience in conducting compliance, monitoring and supervision on issues such as pricing and misleading commercial practices in the retail sector. We have experience in the front-of-house area, let us say. We then had to pivot to the back office and headquarters area to go through the contracts and what kind of pricings there were in terms of promotions, marketing, wastage, shrinkage and all of that. It is a lot of work, particularly given that we were only dealing with direct suppliers to a number of large wholesalers and retailers-----