The Groceries Order in Ireland is over! Big and small stores can now compete on price and consumers will hopefully benefit!
Savings per family per year could be anything between 500 and 1000 Euro for the “average” household. Whatever an average household is.
The Groceries Order banned the sale of goods below the invoice price.
There’s a great discussion on Today FM about it right now! 
9 Comments
John Leach (1 comments.) on November 10, 2005 at 11:55 am.
Kiss your independent shops goodbye. Say hello to concentrated wealth. Your consumers will only benefit short term.
Donncha (1707 comments.) on November 10, 2005 at 12:33 pm.
I can think of only one independent shop around here or anywhere.. it’s a tiny little shop just outside Blarney. I’ve been in there, ooh, twice.
The rest are Spar/Centra/Supervalu/other franchises anyway..
Jennifer on November 10, 2005 at 9:04 pm.
That sounds great. I can see why you’re happy about it. But watch out for WalMart and the like. They’ve wiped out all businesses in some towns in the U.S. That’s where the danger is.
BronwynJ (1 comments.) on November 12, 2005 at 12:30 am.
Thank-you for the link to my blog which apparently is somewhere on yours. I still love your top photo.
Donncha (1707 comments.) on November 12, 2005 at 9:02 am.
BronwynJ .. you’re welcome, but you’re spamming my site now, I’d appreciate a comment that’s relevant to the post!
Colm on November 13, 2005 at 7:18 pm.
There will be no reduction in prices as there is no incentive to pass on the reductions. It is a political exercise
Donncha (1707 comments.) on November 14, 2005 at 12:34 am.
Colm – possibly, but I think there will be. If there aren’t any reductions it will be one less excuse the big chains can hide behind to justify their massive profits (calculated from tax receipts)
justin (2 comments.) on November 14, 2005 at 5:03 pm.
this could be incredibly dangerous for Irish consumers in the long term, unless some sort of anti-monopoly regulations are put in place. What sort of consumer choice will there be if ,say, Dunnes Stores ends up running every grocery shop in the country?
hostyle on November 15, 2005 at 5:29 pm.
Dunnes Stores already have 3 stores within 3 square blocks in Limerick city and 2 within 100 yards at the Parkway out towards the University. Are they the WalMart of Limerick?
I think only the discerning consumer will benefit, and only in the short term. There will be a few price wars on certain popular products – milk, bread, spuds, etc. – to drive customers in (while they make other popular products you need to buy at the same time more expensive), and only those willing to shop for different products in different stores will save any money. This will probably end when all the entrenched stores realise that they’re just wasting their time, when they could instead start a new cartel (if they don’t already have one) same as like the publicans of our beset nation and then its goodbye to your disposable income on necessary consumables.
But this is Ireland – we’re used to being gouged for every penny and it gives us something else to moan about in the pub.