Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the issue of food pricing. With the Ukraine crisis last year, input costs for fuel, feed and fertiliser rose massively for primary producers, particularly in our agricultural sector. Most of those costs have not gone down to any degree. Dairy farmers are putting out a lot more slurry this year than they were last year when they were using more nitrogen. That is because of where costs have gone. Milk prices in December were at approximately 60 cent per litre and are now at approximately 40 cent per litre. Some co-ops have preferential agreements with farmers where they loan them money along the way and they are probably only paying 36 or 37 cent per litre. That is where the milk price stands at the moment. The big problem here is in the supermarket sector and what it does. Dairy products and bread have always been used as loss leaders to encourage people in. That continues to be the case today as we can see with the drop in the price of milk. A supermarket price war started two weeks ago with the advertising of the dropping of the price of milk. The supermarket sector is completely distorting distribution and supply at retail level. Let us consider Dungarvan, County Waterford for example. It has a population of only 8000. The town has Lidl, Aldi, Dunnes and two Musgraves outlets.

Tesco is now talking about going in. That is a market town. I am concerned that if another multiple enters it, those lovely, small shops and many trades and businesses will just not survive another entrance of that scale. We need to do more to clamp down on this. Tesco does not report its Irish profits separately. It amalgamates them into its group profits. There was an anecdotal comment years ago that Ireland was described by Tesco as the paradise of retail in Europe because it was enjoying such margins. Dunnes is a private company.