Donie Cassidy (Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

We discussed this in the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, of which I am Chairman. Although the committee was unanimous in support of retaining the groceries order, the Government and the Minister have made a decision. That is their democratic right and we must accept and support it as democrats and members of the Government. When it comes before the committee on Committee Stage we will tease it out. As someone from rural Ireland who knows the importance of the villages and rural setting in which we are fortunate to live I want to correct one item in this data. It reads: "since 1990 the rate of inflation in Ireland has been three times the rate in the UK and almost twice the EU average". That may be true but in the past two years grocery prices here have fallen by 1.2% while in the UK they have increased by 1.4%. In the past two years there has been a 2.6% differential in the UK compared to Ireland.

I thank the professional industry representatives who assisted the committee in its deliberations over many days. Everyone, with the exception of Dunnes Stores — Tesco, the Irish manufacturers, the Meath and north Dublin growers and the quality food producers — genuinely opened their hearts, their experiences and their books to us over many days. I was struck that the Minister said he has a serious obligation with regard to below-cost selling. Below-cost selling is unfair and I do not want to see thousands of Irish jobs lost to it. All fair-minded Members of this House want to know what protection this Bill gives to manufacturers and producers of Irish goods from below-cost selling. If there is no protection, thousands of Irish jobs will be lost three, five or seven years down the line.

As we all know, the big area of growth is the convenience store. The officials and the Minister are in agreement on this. The next biggest growth area is own-brand shopping. Own-brand products may be manufactured in the same place as branded goods and labelled differently. Own-brand products do not have to show the place and date of manufacture. We all know that approximately 40% of all groceries bought in Ireland are own-brand. This is where below-cost selling can occur and pose a danger to the entire food manufacturing industry. I represent as many people as I can in my few words today. All colleagues including the Minister of State are concerned. This is an important Bill which can have far-reaching repercussions in the market place.

Irish people have six shopping choices. Tesco and Dunnes Stores control almost 47% or 48% of the market while 22% is controlled by the symbol groups such as Centra. The family stores give meaningful employment, with 70, 80, 90 or 100 staff. There are the convenience stores and the corner shops, which are responsible for the social fibre of our villages or towns and with which everyone can identify. The danger of this Bill is that in the future if one does not have a car one will need to hire a taxi or mini-bus to do one's shopping. That would be wrong. In the committee we said "if it is not broken, why mend it?" If there is a good reason for various amendments we will support them. Everyone will support the Bill if there is an obligation to ensure that own-label goods display the date and place of manufacture.

I live in Castlepollard, the capital town in north Westmeath. While we have a second-level college and the council services have been decentralised there, Castlepollard has no filling station. In the 12 miles from Finnea village to Donnelly's, five miles from Mullingar, which the Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows well, there is no filling station because of what is happening in the market place. I predict that if it continues to go this way in three or five years there will be no filling station in all of north Westmeath and people will have to travel 25 miles to buy fuel for their cars. This is wrong. I represent a rural county only 55 or 60 miles from Dublin. We cannot preside over legislation that allows a security van to reverse up to a megastore at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. on 23 December and bring the hundreds of thousands of euro back to Dublin from where it could be in Switzerland before the following morning. All our social welfare, pension and children's allowance cheques are built into this Bill and there are serious decisions to be made. While I will support the view of the Minister and the Government, the committee has concerns regarding certain sections of the Bill.

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