Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister to investigate what is blatantly obvious to anyone who knows the industry, namely anti-competitive practices by large brewing companies in Ireland.

They are abusing their scale or market dominance to have basically exclusionary deals with publicans, large-scale publicans in the main. Large brewers are providing free stock, advance discounts, capex or cash investments to on-trade publicans on condition of excluding competitors and their beers or ciders. This is a serious issue for the industry. I am bringing legislation, which the Government is supporting, to the House to allow craft brewers to sell their products and grow. Those provisions are being neutralised by what I feel are anti-competitive practices whereby large brewing companies are coming in, offering all these incentives and basically telling craft brewers and, dare I say it, other brewers, to take their stock off the shelves and off draft. The are telling publicans they will give them funds, that they will pay for refurbishment, give them free kegs and even cash as long as they get rid of the other brands. How is that not illegal? No-one can tell me it is not anti-competitive. It already happened in Greece, where a subsidiary of Heineken had a large-scale fine put on in the tens of millions. There was a case in Greece where a small brewer took a high court action for similar practices. It is going on here in Ireland.

I was in a pub in Cork recently where there were 21 taps of which 19 were from the one brewing company. There were two for Guinness because, as we all know, they cannot get rid of the Guinness. Did anyone else try to get into that pub? Of course. Why are they not there? This is happening all over Dublin and all over the country. They go to the largest pub in each town, the opinion forming pub, and try to influence it. They offer to do a deal with that publican that if he takes out the rest, or at least takes them off draught, they will look after him. I have a list in my hand. Basically every county in Ireland is on it.

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, is well aware of this. It has had a number of complaints. I do not think it has the resources to deal with them. It is not a priority. This is affecting jobs all over the country. My county has four craft brewers. I look at Bulmers in Clonmel and I know across the country they are absolutely being devastated by this decision. I know of one brewer, a Munster brewer, who gave out about being taken out of a pub and was then taken out of a range of pubs in a geographical area because they put their head above the parapet and made a complaint. This is not on.

We need the Minister of State to get on to the CCPC to say this needs to be investigated properly once and for all and ensure that these anti-competitive practices stop to allow a fledgling industry to grow, to allow for fair competition and to ensure that other laws such as tax laws are being adhered to properly across the board. We must ensure that people are being protected and there is not a dominant brewing company or companies in this country, originally from outside this country, behaving in an anti-competitive way and costing Irish people jobs. The bottom line is that if this is not investigated, jobs will continue to be lost.

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