Tesco Irish sales join group recovery

Like-for-like sales at Tesco’s Irish operations showed marginal growth of 0.2% in the three months to the end of May — the first quarter of the British supermarket giant’s financial year.

Overall, the period marked Tesco’s sixth consecutive quarter of group growth and the strongest UK sales growth in seven years.

Group chief executive Dave Lewis has been leading a fightback after Tesco’s profits were hammered by changing shopping habits, the rise of German discounters Aldi and Lidl and an accounting scandal in 2014.