Retailers ‘must lift secrecy’ on profits

Independent grocers’ group RGData has called on the Government to lift the “veil of secrecy” from the profits made by large multiple retailers.

The association’s director general, Tara Buckley, told an Oireachtas committee that large retailers went to inordinate lengths to conceal information on the turnover and profits generated by their activities in Ireland.

“Money spent in Irish-owned shops on Irish products is worth four times more to the local economy than that spent in the German or UK multiples,” Ms Buckley told a meeting of the joint committee on agriculture and food yesterday.

Ms Buckley described the relationship between suppliers and the large multiples as unbalanced and called for an independent and enforceable code for commercial relations.

She referred to the appointment of an independent groceries code adjudicator in Britain who has the power to launch investigations about suspected breaches of the code, including those arising from confidential complaints.

Ms Buckley claimed that some larger suppliers had behaved unreasonably towards independent retailers in Ireland.

“This includes large suppliers who have delisted independent retailers or issued legal threats to shopkeepers who have sought to source identical products from other markets in circumstances where they can be secured on more favourable terms,” she said.

Retail Ireland director Stephen Lynam said the representiative body for the entire retail sector affiliated to employers’ group Ibec was opposed to a national code on retail/supplier relations, arguing that a proposed EU voluntary agreement offered the best model for progress.

“The only organisations that will benefit from a national code would be those suppliers and processors in the middle of the supply chain, not the consumers at one end, or the farmers, at the other,” he said.

Mr Lynam also told the committee that EU legislation on the origin labelling of meat in prepared foods would not have prevented the horsemeat scandal.