Martin Daly: Who's Tracking Soaring Grocery Prices?

Thank you Cathaoirleach and Minister Redmond. I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue which has been felt in the households right across the Roscamond Galway and indeed across the country. People are very clear about what they're experiencing. The cost of the weekly shop has risen significantly and it continues to rise. For many households, particularly those on low and middle incomes, this is not an abstract issue, it is a real and immediate pressure. Families are noticing it week to week. They are adjusting what they buy, where they shop and how much they can afford to spend. What was once routine has now become a careful calculation. And we know that this is not just anecdotal. Food prices have risen by over 20% in a relatively short time. That represents a real, very real and sustained increase in the cost of living. For lower income households, the situation is even more stark. A healthy weekly shop can take up to one third of disposable incomes. So when we talk about grocery prices, we're not just talking about marginal changes, we're talking about a structural shift in affordability. The core issue I want to raise here today is not simply that prices are rising, but how those prices are being monitored and understood. We have a number of bodies with roles in this place, including the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission and the Agri-Food Regulator. There is no single body with a clearly defined role in monitoring grocery price trends, examining retail pricing practices or providing a consistent consumer-focused view of what is happening in the market. That raises a fundamental question about whether the current framework is sufficient. If prices are rising at the pace people are experiencing, who is tracking them in a structured way? If there are issues around pricing practices, who is examining them from the perspective of the consumer? And if pressures are building, where is the clear line of accountability? In rural areas such as Roskam and Galway, this issue is particularly acute and was brought to fore in the recent fuel crisis, which expanded into a cost-of-living issue for people in that area and many other areas, I should say. Choice can be more limited and households can be more exposed to rising costs. So I ask the Minister, what assessment has been made of grocery prices increases and their impact on consumers? And does the Minister accept there may be merit in a more clearly defined stand-alone mechanism or watchdog with the responsibility for monitoring grocery pricing, transparency and affordability from the consumer perspective? Thank you Deputy Minister. I'm very grateful to the Deputy for raising this issue, one that I have absolute familiarity with, having previously been a Minister in the Department with responsibility for retail and this issue at a period when we had 16.9% grocery inflation on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which massively increased food and energy prices across Western Europe and global inflation will see grocery prices increase. At the time we would have seen grocery stores reduce their prices on about 700 products in the interim, but there was a range of different proposals suggested and I think the opportunity I have here this afternoon to the directness of the points raised by Deputy Daly is to outline the role of the current existing situation. So the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Last Year, is responsible for policy in relation to competition and consumer protection. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is the independent statutory body for enforcing competition law and consumer protection legislation. The CCPC is not a price monitoring or price regulating body. The collection, compilation and publication of official price data is a statutory function of the Central Statistics Office. Businesses in Ireland are generally free to set their own prices, provided they do so independently and in compliance with competition and consumer protection law. The CCPC has engaged with public concerns about grocery prices within its existing remit. In August 2025, it published an updated high-level analysis of the Irish grocery retail sector, updating its 2023 work. This analysis examined market concentration, entry and expansion, national and international price trends and the profitability of major grocery retailers. The CCPC concluded that while grocery prices have indeed risen significantly since 2021, there is no evidence of a failure of competition or of excessive pricing in the sector. The CCPC plays an active and enforcement-focused role in protecting consumers. It enforces competition and consumer protection law across the economy, including in the retail and grocery sectors and takes action, for example, where traders mislead consumers, fail to display prices correctly or breach pricing transparency requirements. This includes inspections, prosecution and enforcement actions in the grocery and wider retail sectors. In parallel, the CCPC protects consumers by preventing anti-competitive outcomes that could lead to higher prices or reduce choice in including in rural areas. For example, the CCPC approved a proposed supermarket acquisition by Tesco only after the company agreed to divest in outlets and more and more, protecting local competition in Galway. The Central Statistics Office continues to publish detailed and independently verified data through the Consumer Price Index, including on food and drink prices. This data provides a transparent and authoritative basis for understanding price movements across the wider economy. Thank you, Minister. Deputy. Thank you, Minister. I appreciate the response, but I think the concern remains around how this is being experienced by people on the ground. What people are telling us is that the value of the euro in the shopping trolley has fundamentally changed. There was a time when people could shop around. They might do a core shop in one retailer and then top up in other retailers for choice. But what we are increasingly hearing now is that those price differences have narrowed significantly, suggesting a lack of competition in the retail sector. The sense of being able to shop strategically and save has reduced, and people feel they are paying more, regardless of where they go. At the same time, the evidence is clear that healthier food can be up to three times more expensive per calorie than less healthy alternatives, while cheaper, more processed options continue to offer more for less. So people with the least resources eat the unhealthiest food, and that has ramifications right throughout our health system and our state. So when households are under pressure, they are not making lifestyle choices, they are making budget decisions. That brings me back to the central point. People are seeing prices rise, but they do not see who is actively tracking those increases, analysing them, or holding the system to account in a clear and visible way. So the question is not whether structures exist, but whether they are sufficient or coherent enough for the reality that people are now facing. And it has to be put in the context that this is not simply an Irish problem. This is about the lower middle class people, people who get up and work every morning, and pay for everything in this state, and they are being squeezed and crushed. As one senator on our side, Senator Theresa Costell said, Martin, there's no fun in their lives. That means they go out to work every day, and by the time they get to the end of the week, they just about make ends meet. And these are a group of people who don't want to be radicalised, but are going to be radicalised, and that was clear that they were targeted during the recent fuel crisis. So does the minister accept there's a case for a more focused and visible approach to monitoring grossing pricing, so that consumers can have confidence that what they are experiencing is being properly examined and understood? I don't necessarily, to be honest, do accept that, Deputy, because perhaps maybe this is a communications issue, because the structures, as you also said, the structures are there. The CCP enforces competition in consumer protection law, and the CSO independently collects and publishes official price data through the Consumer Price Index. So there's two bodies doing the key things that you're asking. The CCPC is not the price monitoring or price regulating body, it just enforces it, but the CSO is the price monitoring body. And I think you're right, equally, that grocery prices is not a uniquely Irish issue. We don't perhaps have the competition in the grocery sector that I would like, but let's not forget that up to about 10, 15 years ago, there was only three major grocery retailers in the country. The addition of two additional grocery dealers have provided that option. We look at consumer spending, purchasing power has gone up by 2.9% on last year compared to the year before, but this is something that has unfortunately bedevilled economies across Europe. Croatia and Hungary introduced price caps on grocery, and had a disastrous consequence with lack of affordability availability. The left-wing government in Spain proposed to introduce price caps only to be brought with the conclusion that isolated rural supermarkets and smaller stores would simply have to close. To the nubbier point, I don't for an instant hesitate to accept that people are feeling very much the pinch at the supermarket tails at the moment, and they are rightly concerned. The key to this is, one, we are in the grips of an energy crisis that leads to issue with costings and food provision. In turn, we need to make sure that the systems that are there already in place, through both the CCPC and the CSO, are perhaps communicated more clearly and directly to allow that level of consumer confidence to be in place, to make sure that even though things are very, very tight, that there is genuine plans in the government, be it through changes to income tax or be it through targeted supports and social, to make sure that there is a little bit of a break given to what I accept, in conclusion, is a very hard pressed part of our society.