Groceries Order debate heats up as figures disputed

A CROSS-PARTY parliamentary committee is lining up for a showdown with the Competition Authority over figures the authority used to support its call for scrapping the ban on below-cost selling.

The Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business, in a report published last month, came out in favour of retaining the Groceries Order, which bans below-cost selling.

At fresh hearings beginning today, the 15-strong committee is expected to challenge how the Competition Authority (CA) interpreted Central Statistics Office (CSO) data.

The burning debate over prices in Ireland - and in particular the Groceries Order - has been charged by the extraordinary success of Eddie Hobbs’s RTÉ programme Rip-Off Republic.

Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin is to decide whether to retain the ban in early October.

A number of voices have lined up on either side of the mounting debate. The CA and the newly formed National Consumer Agency want the order scrapped, while IBEC, grocers’ organisation RGDATA and the Enterprise Committee want it retained.

Mr Hobbs’s Monday night programme attracted the highest audience figures for a factual programme so far this year, at 778,000 people.

While Enterprise Committee chairman Donie Cassidy (FF) wants to challenge the views expressed by Mr Hobbs, another member, Brendan Howlin, said yesterday this should not be the function of an Oireachtas committee.

However, Mr Howlin, Labour spokesperson on enterprise, yesterday echoed IBEC’s criticisms of the CA, saying it had used figures to “suit its purposes”.

“Our own analysis showed that some goods that are the subject of the Groceries Order had declined in price but they were not included by the CA,” said Mr Howlin.

He argued the CA had decided that anything that interferes with a free market is intrinsically wrong.

Mr Howlin said competition was good but there were other factors at play. He cited the eclipse of town centres by out-of-town retail parks in Britain and the problems this caused for elderly people and those without transport, as well as the prospect of predatory pricing if the order was scrapped.