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BUYING IRISH:IN RECENT months, cash-strapped consumers have been called upon by politicians and lobby groups to think local for the sake of the nation and the chorus of food producers warning against the “Tesco-isation” of Irish society and exhorting us to buy Irish has grown increasingly loud.

Speaking to a food conference in Dublin earlier this month, economist Jim Power, the chairman of the Love Irish Food (LIF) campaign, pulled no punches when discussing the Irish retail business. He gave out yards about consumer organisations which claimed that food shopping was all about price and he warned that Irish suppliers were being put under intense pressure by big retailers, some of whom, he claimed, wanted to stock the same products regardless of where in Britain and Ireland they were plying their trade.