Sales fall 3% at Irish Tesco stores

TESCO saw sales drop 3.4% at its Irish stores to €1.5 billion in the first half of the year as customers spent less on non-food items.

This comes as Tesco, on a group basis, posted one of its biggest-ever quarterly falls in underlying sales across all of its stores. It does not see any immediate uplift in economic trends but believes the worst may be over.

There was a 20% jump in online shopping in Ireland in the first half of the year with the supermarket saying sales of its own-brand goods continued to strengthen.