Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I made my views on this matter clear on Committee Stage. I understand that food supplements are recognised as food under Irish and EU law. Specifically, EU Directive 2002/46/EC on food supplements was enacted in Ireland under statutory instruments in 2007. The health food industry is required to adhere to all food regulations to ensure quality and consumer safety.

I understand this is a money-raising measure by the Revenue Commissioners on behalf of the Minister for Finance, but it is short-sighted. Many people visit health food shops to buy food supplements to supplement their efforts to address well-being issues and improve their health, perhaps after a bout of illness. For instance, they might take probiotics in the context of having been prescribed antibiotics. Such a duality is common in a large number of European countries through the prescription of what one might call formal and therapeutic medicines administered by the medical system, including chemists, and the taking of food supplements, which are sold to supplement something that the person feels he or she needs. Many elderly people use supplements. Many parents give them to their children whose recovery they are seeking to promote after a bout of illness. The purpose of these supplements is well-being.

Most of the shops that sell health food supplements are small-scale owner-operated shops. That may be changing in some of our larger towns and cities, but they remain owner-operated for the most part and make an important contribution to small shopping centres.

The Minister moved the applicable VAT rate from the 23% he proposed last year to 13.5%, but even that is excessive. The 13.5% rate should be examined anyway. While in government, we applied the 9% rate to certain areas of activity, such as labour cost activities in hotels and catering. The Minister should rethink this matter. At a time when many small shops, be they in cities or towns, are being tightly squeezed, food supplement shops and health food shops are doing fairly well.

We are not talking about items that clearly fall outside what the discussion has been about. Rather, we are talking about specific supplements that people find to be serious additions to their attempts to achieve well-being and recovery or to help with chronic conditions, for example, arthritis. The Minister is wrong and his colleague in the Department of Health will not thank him, given that this decision will affect people who are addressing their issues on their own. Take fish oil as an example. Many supplements in health food shops contain fish oil, which is a traditional remedy that goes back eons, in various forms and with different levels of omega-3 and so on. If eaten as part of a fish, fish oil would definitely be considered a food. If it is extracted from the fish and sold as a health food supplement, why is it suddenly not a food? The Minister must explain himself. I am sure that he has taken various remedies that people have recommended, possibly including cod liver oil for a bout of flu.

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