Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

Like my colleagues, I do not have a difficulty with the Bill. Having served in this House for a long time, no more than the Minister, I want to ask him why all this was not foreseen. I saw these people at committee meetings over the years and surely there must have been some indication that they were going to leave. I appreciate that people come and go all the time, but in this respect there must be a proper mechanism in place. I am sure this will not be the biggest problem that will beset the Minister in his office. Many people will ask why we are wasting the time of the Dáil or what is the necessity for having to do this. I appreciate that, legally, the Minister had to do this, but at a time when 425,000 people are unemployed I cannot understand why it was not possible to get people to take on those jobs. I hope that this will not happen again.

I recall on number of occasions being at committee meetings, such as the committee to which Deputy English referred, at which officials of the Competition Authority were present. I always thought that its objectives were right and I understood from where it was coming in what it did. This matter was mentioned by a number of Deputies. There have been several legal requirements in the way of its acting. I recall at the time of the home heating oil saga, it successfully prosecuted a number of home heating oil suppliers that were obviously acting in concert in terms of the prices being charged. That case was successfully brought through the courts. I got the impression on several occasions since then, and I will refer to a few cases, that had the Competition Authority more teeth, staff and energy it could have done and should have done several other things during the past few years. That is the reason the Fine Gael proposal that the Competition Authority should be merged with the National Consumer Agency into a new Irish fair trading authority would make a great deal of sense. It is possible that the Minister will also realise the necessity for doing that when he is in the Department for a little while and he might even go so far as calling this proposal his Bill. That is what happens in politics, but one way or the other if it is good for Ireland, that will be okay.

When we talk about competition, one of the first people who comes to mind is Eddie Hobbs, who began the campaign on competition and rip-off Ireland. We in Fine Gael ran a website, www.ripoff.ie, which was extraordinarily successful, received thousands of hits and touched a pulse with most people. People get the feeling much of the time that they are being ripped off but they do not know why or how. All of this gave a new awareness that this happens to individuals a thousand times in a year. For some strange reason, a product is a certain price here and a different price 50 miles down the road.

I come from a farming background. Many years ago, I got myself into a position where I was a very minor player in the Goodman inquiry when I said I thought the meat factories were in concert with each other. While I genuinely believed it at the time, once the report came out, there was not much about the meat factories being in concert with anyone, although that is another story which we will not open up today.

It is a fact that there is a real lack of competition, although when competition is overly severe, this can sometimes have major negative effects, an issue raised by Deputy English. I have seen several recommendations from the Competition Authority over the years. It appears it never laid a hand or a glove on any of the Government Departments and, for some strange reason, simply steered clear of them. Was it that it knew the Minister too well or that it did not want to take the flak from the Government? I do not know. However, there was no area where service prices increased more than in the areas serviced by either the Departments or local government.

Take refuse charges, for example, which are a policy to print money. Some made huge amounts of money out of landfill sites and there did not seem to be any controls. The Minister, Deputy Batt O'Keeffe, knows this problem as well as I do, given it is central to his new role. Take the cost of electricity and gas over the years. We know the cost has dropped significantly over the years but it appears it will be on the way up again.

I am delighted the Minister is present. As I said some weeks ago, there is one aspect of pricing I cannot understand. Some 18 months or two years ago, the price of crude oil spiked at $140 a barrel and the talk throughout the country concerned whether supplies would run out when prices here reached €1.35 to €1.40 a litre. I filled my car with diesel at a service station in recent days at €1.30 a litre and I am told this price will continue to increase. However, when I checked the price of crude oil last week, it was $82 a barrel, which is a long way from $140 a barrel, yet the price spike is still increasing.

The Minister or another member of Government should tell the House who is ripping us off in this regard. I assume it is a huge international financial matter but, whoever is doing it, can a national Government do anything about it? We talk about the cost of living but we cannot ask commuters to pay that sort of price, particularly as I am told it is likely to increase by 10% or 15% in the next four or five months. It is against this background that someone needs to start asking very serious questions. At one time, we used to say it was the oil producers of OPEC which screwed us, saying "We own the oil, we are pumping it out and we will give it to you at our price". This is no longer the case. Oil is almost half the price it was but we are still paying more for it, which is a problem. While I do not know what authority should solve it, somebody would want to explain it.

I wish to raise a hobby horse of mine, namely, the grocery business. It is very important that we have a wide variety of products and fine establishments and supermarkets. On the other hand, it is extremely important that we balance that with the display of the best of Irish farm products. The Minister will hear much about the following issue in his current role. I have not the slightest doubt there is no shortage of hello money being sought and given in regard to the display of products in supermarkets. It is like a fiddler's elbow, and they are all at it. To what extent they are at it, I do not know, but it is putting remarkable pressure on producers.

This is a con for consumers. What the retailers are suggesting is that if they tighten their grip and lower the price of the product coming onto the shelf, this has to be good for the consumer who is buying the product. If people were not that long out, they might believe that. However, if one thinks about it, what will happen, as Deputy Penrose noted, is that two heads of cabbage will not grow on the one stalk because they must have room. If we continue down this line, the primary producer will get pushed out.

While this is more relevant to the overall issue than to the Bill, I point out that we spend great amounts of money through the Oireachtas to ensure people farm properly and that the best possible products are made available by Irish farmers. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows what I am talking about. If great pressure is put on the producers, they cannot make a profit on what they sell. I am a suckler cow farmer. If I sell my weanlings every year and get €100 less than the cost of producing them, I cannot stay in business even though I am farming to the best possible standard - it is as simple as that. This cannot continue for much longer.

Take the situation of those tillage farmers producing wheat for bread, who will be steamrolled out of business. If that happens, we can of course buy in wheat from wheat-producing areas of the world but it will be bought at their price. There will be years when it is cheaper but, believe me, there will be years when it is much dearer and of much inferior quality. That is the kind of conundrum which faces the Minister, and it is not an easy one to answer. I have no doubt it is an issue to which he will want to return. The Competition Authority and the National Consumer Agency have a huge say in what will happen in the future in this regard.

The situation is serious. The Minister has talked of a voluntary code of practice. While I am not an expert on the matter, I understand this was tried in England with very poor results. If the Minister believes a voluntary code of practice would work, I cannot understand why he does not introduce it on a statutory basis. At the end of the day, there are competing national demands. There are the consumers on one side and the producers on the other, with the profiteers in the middle. It is a fact that in recent years, given the recession, the single industry that seems to have made the most money, other than the builders and developers who are now with NAMA, is the retail industry. People have to eat no matter what income they have. Against that background, a huge issue arises. The Minister should take the bull by the horns and introduce a code of practice which will be implementable. The introduction of a voluntary code, given the current atmosphere, will not work.

I wish to refer to one other issue before concluding. The issue of planning permission in terms of the area granted or not to major retailers in country towns and cities has been kicked around a great deal. During the past year or so, a major retailer opened a fine premises in Ballinasloe, County Galway, which is in my constituency. It appears to be working well. However, we must ensure we do not pull the heart or lifeblood out of local towns, some of which are big towns. These developments are opening up on the fringes of towns and are pulling business from the centre of our towns, leaving us with nothing but shabby, badly run towns. Without footfall in the centre of any town, the heart dies and we all know what happens then.

We can have the competition that housewives and consumers need. However, at the end of the day we must ensure these developments are of a size and model that does not ruin our towns and cities. Fine Gael has no difficulty with this Bill which provides us with an opportunity to put on record our thoughts on the various agencies covered therein. It is hoped that regardless of what happens to the staff in the future it will not be necessary to again introduce a Bill of this type.

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