In 1974 when in America I saw a development called scanning and bar coding in the supermarket business. I recognised the huge impact this could have in my business. On my return to Ireland I became involved in 1975 in the establishment of the Irish Article Number Association, which allocates bar codes to products. We asked businesses to amend their packet designs to incorporate the code. It was 1985 before the first supermarket used the technology, yet a number of companies refused to change their packaging. They were so wrong. When the first supermarket opened in Ballincollig, County Cork, it had great difficulty in trying to get people to realise that the world was changing fast.