Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

To refer to the previous speaker's point about it not being just a matter of price, that is the entire argument. Ultimately that is what the debate is about. No one will be exercised too much about the competition amendment before the House, yet it is something about which we need to be seriously concerned. The Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, on which I serve, did a year-long trawl of the grocery trade and asked all of the major operators to come and speak to it about barriers to competition and what they believed should be done. Apart from Dunnes Stores, all the major stakeholders of the grocery industry attended and made substantive presentations to the committee. Not one of them asked that the groceries order be revoked.

Aldi and Lidl said that were it not for the groceries order, they would not be in Ireland today. They made a very clear, coherent case. They said they deal in a limited range of goods — 1,000 approximately. Deputy Hogan may correct me if I am wrong. That figure may change over the course of the trading year. However, that is basically the volume they deal in. If the groceries order had not been in place, then any of the multiples could simply have reduced their prices dramatically on the range of goods Aldi and Lidl limit themselves to and forced them out of business or compelled them not to enter the market in the first place.

If something works, why change it? If it is not broken, why say one is going to fix it, for the sake of publicity, gloss or spin? That is exactly what this is about — publicity, gloss and spin. That committee came up with a comprehensive report before the Minister made his decision. In the meantime, a supposedly parallel investigation was being carried out by the consumer strategy group.

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