Michael Ahern (Cork East, Fianna Fail)

Some 2,500 stores went out of business and the economic evidence points to the fact that the groceries order was the major contributing factor to that demise. Can the Deputy point to even a handful of new, small and truly independent stores that opened in the same period? The order did not protect small retailers in the manner he claimed. Neither did it protect suppliers who were faced with secretive, arbitrary and discriminatory demands from retailers. Those demands were not just facilitated by the order but were positively encouraged by the convoluted way in which the provisions and supplementary terms had been drafted.

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