Mr. Colin Fee:

I have three stores in Dundalk and with the rising cost of labour, we looked several times at self-scanning checkouts.

Every time I discussed it with my staff, we said absolutely no way because the amount of stock we would lose would be prohibitive. It is bad enough at the moment when we have people behind the counter and even our off-licence staff now are locked behind a door. If we were to do that, it would just be a free-for-all. We cannot put them in. We are being advised to try to reduce our labour rates because the labour costs are rising all the time. In the next two or three years, we are going to see significant increases. We just cannot do it. We just could not take the risk.