Terry Leyden (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister and his senior officials. It is excellent that the Minister has taken time out from his very busy schedule. I realise how busy his schedule is because I was in that Department for a while. Senators would say that having the Minister present is useful. In fact, it is great to have the Minister here to say a few words and listen to this excellent debate on competition.

What I find regrettable is that we are being forced to introduce this Bill. It surprises me that Ireland, as an independent State, did not have strong enough competition laws up to now, so that the troika had to insist on new legislation. None the less, we are introducing the required legislation.

I would like to hear the Minister's view on below-cost selling, which has been mentioned already by many speakers. The provisions in this regard were revoked by a previous Government. The Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, chaired by former Deputy Donie Cassidy, of which I was a member, came out strongly against revoking that legislation. The motive behind it was to create more competition, which is reasonable, but there is no doubt that alcohol is being sold below cost in most supermarkets, to the extent that publicans in most small towns have to get their drink from the supermarket. It is not really a practical proposition for a publican, who would buy wholesale, to buy it cheaper from Tesco, Dunnes, Aldi or Lidl or wherever. I do not expect a response on this but I ask the Minister at least to examine the possibilities for dealing with it.

There is no doubt in my mind that the cost of drink increases the consumption of alcohol, and not just among young people. Drinking at home has become the norm, and sales of wine have become very high. I have no objection whatsoever to any adult drinking - it can be very pleasant - but the Minister should consider the point that younger people have access to alcohol. I know the Minister's colleague in Government has proposals in this area.

Very low prices can undermine the viability of a service. This happened on the Dublin-Galway bus route. It is the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport that licences the buses, but the prices were undermined so much that a company was nearly put out of business. Competition is fine but, as Senator Norris said, it is not the most important thing, and it can result in people being deprived of a service.

I carried out work in a previous Seanad which I called a name-and-shame campaign. I went around and rang different places to find out the prices of diesel and petrol in various towns, and I found that different towns consistently had the same prices for diesel and petrol. There was little competition, by accident or design. It is hard to prove these things and hard to obtain prosecutions under competition law because these matters are conducted over the telephone and not at meetings.

With regard to airline prices, large airlines such as Air France or Aer Lingus can be dominant in a certain market, such as flights to Paris. Thanks to Michael O'Leary and Ryanair there is competition to some extent, but not to the extent of having a comprehensive services such as those of the two major airlines. I realise this is not the Minister's area, but competition does come under his remit. He will find the prices are practically equal, and they go up at the same rate when demand increases. I believe there is some sort of collaboration between those major airlines with regard to access to cities such as Dublin, London and Paris, and particularly the Paris route. Michael O'Leary deserves great credit, as he has revolutionised the whole airline industry. There is no doubt about it. We should be proud of his work. The Government would be well advised to utilise his talents in some Department or in some other way, because he would be a breath of fresh air. In fact, if someone would vacate his or her Seanad seat, I would recommend him strongly-----