Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

It is often said that the main legacy of Margaret Thatcher is Tony Blair. That comment encapsulates the move to the right in the UK over the past generation. Sadly, however, another of Margaret Thatcher's main legacies was the death of towns and villages across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales because she encouraged competition and, by doing so, allowed the main players to take over the retail sector with large out-of-town shopping centres. Not only did that kill off small family retailers and corner shops but it drained the life blood that allowed towns and villages to survive. As a previous speaker noted, a similar process has taken place in other countries over the past 20 to 30 years.

If we engage in the race to the bottom proposed in this Bill, we will end up with a small number of large players in control of the retail market here. That is not good for communities, family businesses, towns or rural communities. Unless we are careful, the joint legacy of the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment will be the death of small retailers in Ireland. As Ireland becomes a more open and globalised economy, it is becoming more important to nurture and protect that which makes us special. If we are not careful, we will go from the small towns that we know and love to the American mall in the space of a generation, a transformation which will have taken place on this Government's watch.

The irony is that international literature makes a strong case for the protection of villages and small towns and argues that we should allow people to live above their shops and enable them to make trips on foot or by bicycle. However, Ireland is going in the opposite direction by opening up larger supermarkets, getting more people into cars and SUVs, pumping an oil-driven economy and forcing people to spend more time travelling and less time enjoying life.

We need to protect consumers by preventing this race to the bottom. This Government has to be stopped from walking into the room at every opportunity with Wrigleys, Shell or Ikea and allowing big business to walk out with the better deal. We have to protect the small people but this Government has no interest in doing so. The triple back flip performed by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, when he was asked to jump to facilitate Ikea in Ballymun demonstrates that this Government simply wants to protect big business. It is remarkable that the stores Ikea was forced to build in London are a third of the size of the ones elsewhere in Europe, yet in Ireland the Minister leans over backwards and says "take me now".

We have to protect our unique character, which includes villages and towns and smaller businesses and retailers. It is a simplistic argument to say that we should open up to competition and allow big business to do what it wants. This Government stood idly by at the rise of the super pub. It banned magic mushrooms, yet allows the free sale of the two most dangerous drugs, nicotine and alcohol, which kill thousands each year.

The Government only intervenes when it feels it is in its interest to do so.

We need controls to protect the existing retail environment. I am not suggesting we go back to the days when the bell rang when one pushed open the door of the small shop and one's choices in there were limited to marrowfat peas or spaghetti in a tin. I am not suggesting that consumers' choices should be limited, but we should not allow a laissez-faire policy to prevail, which will bring us to the car park of a Wal-Mart within a few years. I am suggesting that small businesses should be supported. I am further suggesting that an older person should be able to walk to a corner shop and find that it is still open and not boarded up, but that requires Government intervention. It requires that the Government does not lift the cap on retail outlet size, is committed to proper planning or simply believes that planning is a good thing in the first instance, although I have my doubts as to whether the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, believes that. It requires some variation of the groceries order, but I see no evidence of commitment on the part of the Government.

This Bill, as Deputy Kelleher pointed out, will facilitate hypermarkets, increase travel times, reduce our sense of community and force people into cars to drive to supermarkets because their local shop is closed. That is not the way we should go. This process is starting with Ikea, but can it be long before we see representatives of Wal-Mart going in the door of the Custom House and coming out with a grin on their faces? I do not think that day is too far away and I am not sure where all this will end. I suspect it will end in the kind of retail environment that exists in the United States, where towns are ghost towns and there is a Wal-Mart or a similar store on the outskirts, to which everybody drives. While the smaller players can have a loss-leader product on sale for a few weeks, some of the multinational retailers can afford to allow Ireland to be a loss-leader for years, while they watch the smaller businesses die — such is the scale at which they operate.

I note that this Bill intends to ban the demanding of hello money, but it spells goodbye to the corner shop. We need a cap on retail outlet size, a proper planning environment and some form of groceries order. If I can make a plea for anything in this debate, it is that we recognise and cherish the sense of community that we have here, the towns with varied shops that we can walk around and where we can chat with neighbours. We should be very wary of simply opening the door to all players who wish to come in and allowing them to build their hypermarkets on greenfield sites. This will consign all of us to having to drive to do our weekly shopping. It will mean that the most vulnerable people in society, older and young people, will not be able to walk to a corner shop and, for that reason, my party will oppose this Bill.

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