June 29th, 2010

Grocery prices – Milk suppliers say regulatory system is chaotic

Commenting on the survey that shows that our groceries are the second most expensive in the EU, the President of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, Jackie Cahill, said that nobody familiar with the chaos that is our regulatory and monitoring system could be surprised by the findings. Mr Cahill pointed out that, once again, it is left to the EU to point out what's wrong with the Irish food sector despite the fact that we had a whole herd of regulation-happy and expensive agencies all of whose expertise and work seemed to boil down to issuing a statement every couple of years telling the Irish consumers to 'shop around'. Mr Cahill said that while the Government and its agencies have never-ending discussions about whether codes of practice should be voluntary or not, the scandal of systematic dominant-position market abuse and margin–grabbing by the multiples continues unhindered. This is precisely what the abolition of the Groceries Order in 2006 was meant to address and, just as ICMSA warned at the time, the exact opposite has proved to be the case. The position of the multiples is stronger than ever while both consumers and farmer producers are abused shamelessly and publicly. The ICMSA President stated that only one question needed to be answered: does anyone in the Government, or any one of its herd of relevant agencies, have the slightest idea what's going on in the food sector and what should be done?

Ends.         29 June 2010.

Jackie Cahill, 087-2820663

President, ICMSA

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press Office

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