Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The move had much more to do with image than reality. In Ireland, where examples of patent rip-offs are as common as rainy Mondays, why would the grocery sector be singled out as the area to be attacked first given that, as an Oireachtas joint committee report showed, food inflation was a negative — minus 1% in the year to last May — and was the second lowest among the 25 members of the European Union? It is more to do with image than reality, and with the notion that the sector is an easier target than professional legal costs and other professional fees.

In his pronouncements, the Minister has urged us to focus on the Bill's contents alone and not on spatial planning or access by the elderly or those without private transport. However, we cannot consider these issues in a vacuum. By way of reassurance, the Minister tells us that access to groceries in the UK is excellent, as 90% of rural households in England live within 4 km of a petrol station. That is all right, then. For those without private transport, it is fine to live 4 km from a petrol station. When one gets there, one can get a gallon of petrol and one day one might be able to save up for the car. Access is an issue which was very strongly argued by Combat Poverty, Crosscare, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other important groups. From personal experience I know how important it is to have access and to be able to live independently.

There is another debate to which the Minister will be well attuned given his former responsibilities in the Department of Health and Children. I refer to care of the elderly. It is important to keep elderly people living at home for as long as possible and access to groceries is an important dimension of that.

Price is not everything. At the Oireachtas joint committee on Enterprise and Small Business, we put the former chairman of the Competition Authority under some pressure. I asked him if there were one shopping centre in Wexford, Tesco, for example, which had the cheapest prices, would it matter if there were no other centre in the vicinity, and he said it would not. From his perspective and that of the Competition Authority, the only important issue was price. Price is not the be-all and end-all. It is very important, but access is important if one is old, infirm and reliant on public transport.

The Minister also told the House that while food cost inflation has been three times the rate of the UK since the mid-1990s, inflation in the clothing sector is virtually identical to the UK rate. The conclusion he has come to is that the food sector is uncompetitive because the clothing sector is clearly competitive. Perhaps this might have something to do with the fact that we have devastated our clothing industry and now import our clothes from China and Morocco. Perhaps it is the view of the Minister that a similar exercise should be carried on in our food industry.

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