Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The clear advice here is that the State intervening in the market by setting a maximum price can have serious and negative impacts, including reputational damage, impact on supply and supply chains, potentially reducing competition, and impacting on jobs. In other words, there are, or may be, significant unintended consequences of intervening in the market which operates on the basis of supply, demand and competition, or at least it should. If we intervene in that, we create unintended consequences, particularly for smaller retailers, some of which were referred to earlier. Larger retailers have more pricing options.

The other thing is that one gets into a very complex area in terms of what products one chooses, and what form of those products one chooses. If one looks at things like bread, for example, there are dozens of different options-----