Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. Both he and I live in the real world. Who we are and where we come from insists we do. We shop in the same places and in the same supermarkets and we see what is going on. We are connected into that and the concerns of the working families we all represent.

The Bill itself is a modest proposal. I am not suggesting and never did at any point, despite the public clamour a couple of years ago, that we should, for example, introduce price controls, because they have inadvertent consequences. Grocery price orders went out a long number of years ago and for very good reason. One of the reasons at the time was because it was supposed to usher in competition, but we know, compared with analogous EU states, we have very limited competition in the supermarket sector here.

That goes back to the potential for abuse of a dominant position. We will never get the full picture in terms of the operation of the Irish retail groceries trade if there is no obligation on those involved to publish and share their profits, in a way that respects commercial sensitivity. Nobody is expecting any operator to simply come out and say this is what they are doing, and they are entitled themselves. The supermarket sector in Ireland and elsewhere is composed of different corporate models. We still have some independently owned businesses. We have international businesses and multinational corporations that are traded on the stock market and so on. We have different company formations and we need to take account of that.

As I said earlier, we cannot say definitively there is not a form of price-gouging occasionally going on in the Irish supermarket sector if we do not have access to all the information to allow us to make that determination. The CCPC simply does not have that information. This modest proposition seeks a way in which we can do that in order to bring greater transparency to the Irish supermarket sector. We hope this will lead to greater fairness for Irish consumers, who have been stiffed at the checkout.

A number of years ago I likened the trip to the supermarket to do the weekly shop to being as welcome as a visit to the dentist. It was and still is very difficult for people. It is becoming as expensive as a trip to the dentist also. That goes to show that the cost of accessing services, more generally, is increasing. Nobody is saying the State should take out a large hammer and decide to make all kinds of interventions, which never worked in the past, and pretend they will work now.

As I said, this is a modest proposal. I am open to introducing amendments which would fine-tune and streamline legislation, and address some of the apparent inconsistencies that may be inherent in the Bill. The Government understands the principle and what it is we are trying to achieve. For example, it is absolutely right that we make a distinction between SMEs and larger corporations. The Minister is entirely right that when it comes to competition, consumer law and prices throughout the economy, when competition law and consumer law are not working the way they were intended, good businesses are impacted. These are businesses that comply with the law, employ people fairly and do their business fairly. Good and proportionate regulation weeds out the cowboy operators and sends a message that we will not tolerate how they operate. When there is greater transparency around pricing structures and the operation of a large sector like this that is so important to our everyday needs, it encourages better behaviour and practice and it weeds out that bad practice.

There are debates on going throughout the world, and I am always attracted to the writings of Mr. Robert Reich, a US academic, economist and former labour secretary under President Bill Clinton. As I did earlier, he talks about how it is not always the job of the State to resource people to deal with the increased cost of living. There are questions around wages, collective bargaining and ensuring workers gain more from their productivity, but there is also a significant role for the State with regard to regulating markets. We have seen trammelled and record profits from large corporations in recent years. There have been examples of enormous profit taking. That is an inequality. The distance between working people and those who run these major corporations has grown, and there has been a multiplier effect. We see CEOs of corporations who used to earn 20 or 30 times what someone on the factory floor would make, earn 300, 400 or 500 times that amount. That encourages the rise of populism and creates the political problems we now have in the world.

There is a job for Government to do regarding smart and proportionate regulation. That is what this Bill is about. I welcome Government TDs not opposing it. I wish to work with the Government to get this to Committee Stage and nuance and finesse it because if we do, and if we succeed in getting it enacted, we will empower the CCPC to do more. I accept there is legislation empowering the CCPC that could be better used and applied to regulate the sector, but there is no legislation anywhere that for example, compels supermarkets to share information that they need to share with our regulators if our regulators are to be respected and empowered. I accept that improvements can be made and I want to do that. If we enact something like this, the consumers of Ireland will thank us for it, and so will all the decent businesses.

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