Euro price hikes - Time to flex consumer’s muscle

The Consumers Association of Ireland (CAI) is currently engaged in “massive research” into the best possible means of staging a consumer backlash at greedy retailers and service providers who engaged in a rip off with the change over to the euro.

The Greeks and Italians did not have to undertake too much research to come up with a boycott of the grabbing retailers, because, like Irish consumers, the evidence was all too clear to them.

It is incontrovertible that the cost of living in Ireland is now the second highest in the Euro zone. Even for items like soft drinks and mineral waters, it now emerges that with a VAT rate of 21%, we are second only to Denmark in the prices of those items.

In pursuing a campaign on behalf of the consumer, the CAI is meeting with the Tánaiste later this month to see what the Government’s response is to their concerns.

Since last January the concerns of consumers over irrational and unjustifiable price increases across a range of services and goods have been unequivocally conveyed to the Government, but to absolutely no avail.

Commendable though the CAI concerns are, what the consumers need is action. And in the total absence of any statutory deterrent to prevent retailers in creasing prices at a whim, the only answer is for consumers to take action.

It would be completely understandable, if they took a leaf out of the Greeks’ book.