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discounters
* Discounters in Ireland are growing by building small stores and local suppliers are being ignored, says Anthony Garvey
Below-cost selling has been outlawed in the Irish Republic's EUR8bn grocery market for the past 14 years, in defiance of advice from independent analysts, economists and the country's Competition Authority.
Successive governments, whatever their political philosophy or the pressure of inflation statistics, have been persuaded to retain the ban. Current Enterprise and Trade Minister Mary Harney, a woman whose free market approach has been denounced as Thatcherite, was the latest to do so, arguing last year, as she renewed it, that the UK experience had shown below-cost selling was "not in the public interest".
And yet, ironically, the fastest growing segment of the Irish market is the two German discount chains, Aldi and Udl, which have a market share of 3%. Their prices are so sharply honed that they have earned an official reminder about the below-cost regulation.
Aldi and Lidl arrived in the Irish market just over two years ago, when trade pundits predicted that their no-frills, low-price policies would never win over local consumers, accustomed to being cosseted and plied with branded products.They could not have been more wrong.Together the...