Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and like other speakers, I agreed with pretty well everything he said. When considering consumer protection in Ireland, some things about which Members were talking last night, such as the unproductive sectors, the sheltered sectors, services and so on obviously come to mind but I welcome the degree of competition in the retail sector. Data from the United Kingdom show that in the immediate post-war period, it took 30% of a family's budget to feed itself but that figure now is down to approximately 9%. This is an illustration of a competitive sector in operation. Sometimes, this will appeal to the consumers and I believe it mostly does. As Senator Clune noted, as there is a strong wish for price competition, this kind of performance will attract business. Moreover, it annoys the suppliers and in this context, I think of one of our leading persons who has done this in producing a leading European brand and in building up an airline with 81 million passengers, namely, our friend and now the friend of the Taoiseach, Mr. O'Leary. He first achieved the highest productivity of any airline and the food industry always will be under pressure to increase its productivity. Second, he took on the suppliers by getting a 40% discount from Boeing, and while there is not an airport with which he has not had a row, the purpose is to reduce the price. Travel agents were eliminated altogether because it could be done more cheaply on the Internet and his was the first airline to dispense with the services of travel agents.

This is what happens and, to paraphrase Adam Smith, bread appears in the shops not because a bunch of philanthropists got together but because of the blowtorch of competition. As Senator Quinn has noted, the reason one innovates is because otherwise the business will be gone. Pre-Gorbachev retailing was described by Senator Quinn well and I applaud Mr. Gorbachev. I believe Trinity College gave him an honorary degree, although it may not have been for changing Russian retailing as I believe he also had some other claims to fame.

In this regard, however, the task for the Minister is that incumbents will always seek a way to keep out new entrants and will invent various reasons the competition is unfair and so on. In the research, most of these reasons do not stand up to scrutiny and there are ways in which producers can respond. I am delighted that a list produced by Bord Bia indicates there currently are 141 farmers' markets. Consequently, if one does not like Feargal Quinn or Hugh Mackeown in Musgrave Group and so on, there are 141 ways in which to deal with that. In considering the Members who are present, I note there are 23 such markets in County Cork, 19 in County Dublin and 14 in County Kerry - I believe Senator Paul Coghlan has left to go to one of them.

One also has the alternative used in the past if it was believed that merchants, intermediaries and retailers were getting too powerful, namely, the co-operative movement. The Minister of State hails from the Blackwater Valley, which is one of the centres of it. It has 150,000 members and a €12 billion turnover. There are alternatives that people should consider rather than grumbling about Tesco, Aldi or Lidl. That is the way the economy operates.

I support the decision not to appoint an ombudsman. The fear one has of bureaucracy is that people invent things to do - the so-called regulatory creep problem. We would be presenting a problem for the Minister's successor, namely, to abolish the position in the future. I commend the amalgamation of the Competition Authority and the National Consumer Agency. Where markets can do something, there is no need for bureaucracy as well.

The Minister of State said that the Government, through its programme for Government commitment, will not legislate for a voluntary code of conduct. That is quite right as a voluntary code of conduct is not legislation, unless one would like to legislate for a voluntary income tax. There is an internal contradiction built in there which I am sure the Minister of State has diagnosed himself.

It will be very difficult to prove the loss leader situation. How come people allegedly selling things at a loss are profitable? I disagree with all of the complaints about the alcohol business. Alcohol consumption in Ireland is falling. Those applying the pressure for minimum pricing are the pubs, which are losing market share. How can one say to somebody who would like to sell one something for a certain amount that one insists one pays them twice as much? Consumption is falling and the younger generation is more responsible in its use of alcohol than my generation. It has become kind of a cause and I have grown rather tired of listening to people in the background say that the price of a bottle of champagne for the economic consultant should remain the same but the price of cider for the working class should be increased because they believe the working class is drinking too much cider. There is a patronising air about that argument in the context of falling consumption and I do not think Government intervention is required. Between now and next year, I hope to persuade the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Alex White, not to intervene. It also goes against European Court of Justice decisions. I thank the Minister of State and the Acting Chairman, Senator O'Neill, for his forbearance.