LAST UPDATE | 8 Jul

ACCORDING TO A recent PwC report, more than 70% of people in Ireland are either ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ concerned about the price of groceries. With good reason.

The cost of staples – butter, milk, beef, cheese, bread – have all skyrocketed. Even the prices of the big chains’ own-brand items – traditionally the cheaper option – have shot up.

According to a new report from Barnardos today, four in 10 parents are skipping meals or eating less to feed their children. One parent told Barnardos that this constant struggle has led to them feeling inadequate because they can’t provide for their family. They spoke of living in a state of constant anxiety having to live from week to week.

These increases have been relentless. Grocery prices have risen at three times the rate of general inflation in the past year alone. In fact, many families are now spending €3,000 more a year to put food on the table than they were in 2021. That’s the price of a family holiday, money that’s needed to pay rent or the soon-to-be increased cost of college fees for students.

Crazy prices

These enormous price increases are taking a huge toll. Of the more than 103,000 calls to St Vincent de Paul this year, almost half were requests for help with food. This is unprecedented and hugely concerning.

We are not talking about families who are spending huge sums on luxury goods. We are talking about parents who work hard all week – going without meals so they can afford to feed their children. We are talking about pensioners, who have to leave items behind at the checkout when they realise they can no longer afford them. We are talking about families spending all of their time scrimping and saving – not for a nice holiday. Just to put food on the table.

This is about the basics. What it costs in this country just to survive – and how an increasing number of people are struggling to meet those costs and keep their heads above water.

That is why, tomorrow, the Social Democrats will bring a motion before the Dáil demanding that the government take action. Our motion sets out several measures which could be taken immediately – including long overdue transparency about supermarket profits and giving regulators more teeth.

Profiteering

There has long been a suspicion that consumers in Ireland are being gouged by large supermarket chains, who use their Irish operations as a cash cow. However, without full transparency on profit levels, it is very difficult to prove this, or for the consumer regulator, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), to do anything other than issue bland statements.

Consumers have a right to know whether surging grocery costs reflect genuine input cost increases or blatant price gouging. Our Dáil motion calls for the introduction of legislation requiring all grocery retailers operating in Ireland – with an annual turnover above €10 million – to publish full audited annual financial accounts.

This requirement would apply to all operators, whether Irish-incorporated or international, to ensure no retailer can claim foreign registration to evade transparency obligations. In addition, we are calling on the government to monitor and publish regular reports on the impact of this transparency initiative on grocery price inflation and competition in the retail sector. We also set out the requirement for regulators – for consumer affairs and food, to be given more powers.

Regrettably, to date, the government response to this crisis has been almost non-existent. It was reported over the weekend that, at the request of Minister of State for Retail Alan Dillon, the CCPC is reopening its probe into the Irish grocery retail sector. However, what is the point of this when the government has failed to give it requisite powers to do its job?

How can this latest CCPC investigation be in any way meaningful when some large supermarket retailers do not publish the profits from their Irish operations? A box-ticking exercise, organised for optics, serves no purpose for the families around the country who are struggling to make ends meet.

‘Supermarket summit’

The last time the government said it would act on this issue was in 2023, when then Minister of State with responsibility for retail, Neale Richmond, convened a ‘supermarket summit’ – an emergency meeting of the Retail Forum. The minister talked tough at the time, giving supermarkets six weeks to bring down the cost of their groceries. Not only was this an abject failure, but the then minister didn’t even do the blindingly obvious — demand that supermarket chains reveal their profits.

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There is also a need for clarity on the way in which margins are spread out, as it appears that the lion’s share of the profits often goes to processors or big retailers. To achieve this, our motion also requires the government to grant the Agri Food Regulator the powers it needs to compel the provision of necessary price and market information from relevant businesses in the agri-food supply chain.

This would allow it to fulfil its price and market data analysis function – something that was requested of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine by the chairperson of the regulator’s board as far back as September 2024.

The grocery market in Ireland is worth at least €10 billion a year. So why is there so little transparency about profits?

The secrecy must end. Accounting transparency by large grocery retailers is essential to protect household budgets, restore consumer trust, and ensure fairness in one of the most critical markets for Irish consumers. It is time to put the needs of struggling families before the eyewatering profits of supermarket chains.

Jennifer Whitmore is a Social Democrats TD for Wicklow.