The Government will change the law to enhance the enforcement powers of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) in dealing with supermarket retailers, the Dáil has heard.
Minister of State for Enterprise Niamh Smyth said, “we are progressing legislative reforms” to give the CCPC “the ability to impose stronger sanctions for breaches of consumer protection law” to tackle anti-consumer exploitative practices.
However, she rejected a Social Democrats call for mandatory financial reporting for all major retailers operating in Ireland with an annual turnover over €10 million.
Ms Smyth said the threshold “would capture a significant number of companies” currently classified as small enterprises and it would be a “disproportionate regulatory burden”.
And attempting to impose “additional or divergent requirements” on international retailers “would create conflict within the EU internal market and expose the State to legal challenges”.
The Minister was responding to a Social Democrats private members’ motion calling for mandatory reporting and full transparency in profits and costs.
Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore said consumers in Ireland are “being gouged by large supermarket chains who use their operations as a cash cow”.
Since 2021, groceries had risen in price by 36 per cent, costing an additional €3,000 per year, the third highest in the EU.
She said the Government attempted to regulate the supermarkets in 2023 when Minister of State Neale Richmond convened a “supermarket summit”. He gave them six weeks to bring prices down, but nothing changed, she said.
“The supermarket summit was a complete capitulation by Government. It was a talking shop,” and “an abject failure”.
Ms Whitmore said they wanted Government to let the regulator “to compel the disclosure of information when carrying out marketing studies. This is what happens in other countries like the UK, so why isn’t it here?”.
“Not only is there complete lack of transparency around supermarket profits. It’s also completely unclear how much profit goes to producers, processors and retailers in the food chain.
“We urgently need clarity on the way in which margins are spread out because, as it stands, it appears the lion’s share of the profits often go to processors or big retailers.”
Ms Whitmore said: “We want you to grant the agri-food regulator the powers it needs to compel the provision of necessary price and market information from businesses in the agri–supply chain.”
Her party colleague Rory Hearne said one supermarket customer told him the price of a pack of six rashers increase by 75 cent “in one jump” and the number of rashers had been reduced to five resulting in a “66 per cent increase on a per rasher basis. This is shrinkflation, which is covering up the gougeflation done by supermarkets”.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said supermarket stock prices “have been going through the roof”. He said “Tesco stock is up 30 per cent in the last year”, while United Value Foods, owner of SuperValu saw their stock price up by 60 per cent in the last year.
United Value Foods owns the Supervalu chain in the US. It is not related to the Musgrave-owned SuperValu in Ireland.
Labour finance spokesman Ged Nash called on the Government to enact legislation his party published in 2023 to oblige international supermarkets to publish their profits.
He also said that, instead of using more than €700 million to cut the rate of VAT on hospitality in Budget 2026, the Government “should use these hundreds of millions to reduce child poverty with a targeted second tier of child benefit, and other measures to provide income supports to households”.
