Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 25:

In page 66, before section 83, but in Chapter 5, to insert the following new section:

"CHAPTER 6

Accounts of Large Multiples

"83.—The Competition Act 2002 is amended in Part 4 by the insertion of the following before section 32:

31A.—(1) The Minister may, by regulation, provide for the power of the Authority to audit the accounts of such multiple retailers as it sees fit for the purposes of ensuring full transparency of the competition in the retail grocery market.

(2) The Authority shall be empowered to publish or part-publish such financial information pertaining to multiple retailers as it may, from time to time, deem appropriate for the purposes of comparison and the assessment of competitiveness or practices of such multiple retailers in terms of sections 4 and 5 of this Act.

(3) In this section—

'multiple retailer' means a grocery retailer with at least 3 distinct trading locations within the State, and shall not include a supplier or wholesaler;

'retailer' means any person who resells grocery goods to the public;

'supplier' means a manufacturer or importer of grocery goods for sale to wholesalers or retailers and includes any person who processes, blends, cans, packs or otherwise prepares grocery goods for sale to wholesalers or retailers and also includes any person who acts as the sole distributor of such goods to wholesalers or retailers;

'wholesaler' means any person who purchases from a supplier grocery goods for resale to retailers.".".

We have heard a good deal about the accounts of large multiples and I look forward to hearing the Minister on this. Given the growth of the larger multiples and their power in this country, we believe it is important that there must be a figure above which accounts should be made public in the interests of the consumer and in the public interest generally. We heard about this during hearings of the Joint Committee on Enterprise and Small Business concerning reports we received and the alleged abuses by large multiples of suppliers, producers, etc. I do not want to labour the point but it is important there is a certain degree of transparency. Before commenting further I would like to hear the views of the Minister on this.