The announcement today (Wednesday, January 3) of price reductions from supermarkets for prices paid by consumers has been met with concern from the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA).
The president of ICMSA, Denis Drennan, addressed the price cuts announced by Aldi today, and said that this has offered the newly operational An Rialálaí Agraibhia (Food Regulatory Office) its “first real test”.
Drennan said that An Rialálaí Agraibhia must “verify” that “any reductions in price introduced by supermarkets are funded out of their own margin”.
The price reductions, Drennan said, must not be “passed back to be borne by the farmer primary-producers through drastic and unilateral reductions in the prices paid to them”.
An announcement from Aldi today said that prices have been reduced by up to 23%, and as a result the cost of a typical trolley of the most popular goods has reduced from €121 to €106.
The ICMSA president said that such price cuts were a factor in the establishment of the office, at the suggestion of farmers, along “with the support of Minister [for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie] McConalogue”.
This establishment, he added, was “in response to repeated instances where highly publicised retail price reductions…were actually seen to have been funded by the supermarkets”.
Such ‘reductions’ were made possible through “drastically cutting the prices” paid to “the links in the supply-chain,” Drennan said.
An Rialálaí Agraibhia
Drennan said that “little” has been heard of An Rialálaí Agraibhia, but the price reduction announcement from Aldi is the “first chance” for the regulator to show farmers “they actually intended doing the job they were set up to do.
“Transparency is one of its key roles and it needs to provide clear information on who is carrying the cost of these reductions.
“This is the acid test, they are either going to show that they are committed and take their job seriously, or they join the herd of ever-increasing herd of quangos and state agencies who exists to no discernible purpose,” Drennan concluded.