Irish Examiner view: Baby formula price hikes must be examined 

Minister has the power to ask consumer watchdog to investigate and find a solution to benefit struggling families during the cost-of-living crisis

St Vincent De Paul has recorded a threefold rise in the number of families struggling to afford baby formula between 2020 and 2023. Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA 

The massive hike in the cost of baby formula in this country, while alarming in its impact on young families here, is something that should have been monitored officially in the first place and can now been easily solved.

With the St Vincent De Paul charity having recorded a threefold rise in the number of families struggling to afford baby formula between 2020 and 2023 — up to 445 — there are concerns that suppliers of the product are hiking their prices more than the increases they had seen in input costs.

A similar issue across the Irish Sea has seen the Competition and Markets Authority stating its concern that manufacturers and suppliers may not have enough incentive to offer formula at competitive prices.

That was prompted by the British consumer watchdog having found that branded suppliers had maintained high profit margins, despite price increases there in the region of 25%. The authority will now use compulsory information-gathering powers to ascertain if there are problems in the market.

Britain’s supply of baby formula is, like Ireland’s, mainly dominated by two companies — Danone (which makes and markets Aptamil and Cow & Gate) and Nestlé (which makes SMA) — but when charities are finding that formula has become one of the most frequently shoplifted items, and is now being sold door-to-door in some areas, surely an investigation is merited.

The Labour party here has called on the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to look into the situation and take action as necessary.

If Enterprise Minister Simon Coveney were to use his powers and ask the consumer watchdog to investigate, it is probable that a solution would be arrived at in short order.

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Catholic Church is out of touch with reality

Time was in this country that when the Catholic hierarchy made a pronouncement on anything, be it about social affairs, politics, or lifestyle matters, people sat up and took notice, or rather, did what they were told.

After the intervention of the bishops at Sunday Mass around the country last weekend, when their collective opinion was offered on the forthcoming referendums on the status of carers in the home and the constitutional status of the family, it is pertinent to ask what impact, if any, it will have.

Certainly, while the Catholic Church still does hold influence in Ireland, the weight of its opinions no longer produce the sort of seismic impact it once did.

With a severely diminished number of worshippers and an even more diminished number of clergy to minister to them, the message from the hierarchy is certainly a strong one. However, will it have the desired effect?

Having lost referendums on abortion and divorce, the grip the Catholic Church once had on the Irish psyche has long been broken.  However, their efforts to keep Ireland a Catholic nation, subscribing to Catholic beliefs, has been a fruitless one for some time now as the country has evolved along more egalitarian lines.

Undoubtedly it is their duty to steer their flock along the path of Church teaching, but to have determined that changing the Constitution on the status of marriage will “weaken the incentive for young people to marry” seems a little out of touch with the reality.

The biggest practical incentive young people have to get married these days is a financial one, as most couples cannot get a mortgage on a single person’s salary, so teaming up and regularising their relationship allows them to build a home together.

Spiritual guidance on the matter is unlikely to sway many young people’s decision-making now and probably even less so in the future.

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Belarus elections all for show

As polls open across Belarus for parliamentary and local elections in a country ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, there is a depressing sense of face about the proceedings.

Lukashenko has ruled what some might term to be a former vassal state of Russia and what others might label as still a vassal state of Russia for over 30 years and, as many thousands have found to their cost, questioning his authority is generally not good for your health, wellbeing, or freedom.

Considering that some 35,000 people were incarcerated after the 2020 presidential election in Belarus — a vote that handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office and provoked protests throughout Minsk and other cities — trying to buck the regime is not widely seen as a sensible move.

Despite accusations of vote-rigging and ballot box-tampering, the Belarussian autocrat is merely following the same rules as his good friend, advocate, and puppet-master Vladimir Putin does in neighbouring Russia.

Indeed, for him to accuse the West of using the election to undermine his government and "destabilise" the state is laughable and believed by neither any informed citizen of the country or any independent observer from outside.

The majority of the candidates in this sham election are members of one of four parties officially registered by the state and all of whom support Lukashenko’s policies. A dozen other parties were denied registration and, therefore, the ability to partake.

That the main opposition leader in Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had to flee the country to neighbouring Lithuania after the last election to maintain her freedom, tells us everything we need to know about this awful regime.

Sadly, her plea to citizens to ignore the vote and boycott the elections will not change the predetermined results and another despot will continue happily in power.