OPINION:Out-of-town superstores would mean walking 20 miles for a pint of milk. A recent Competition Authority report on the subject should be binned, writes SEAN KELLY
IRELAND, PLANNING and success are not words you often see in the one sentence. After all, this is a country where huge swathes of the countryside are being depopulated.
In north Mayo, the only endangered species is man, while the commuter-belt car parks disguised as roads pretend to be a transport network. It is a country where massive housing estates are built without creches, community centres or anything resembling public transport. And we then wonder why people are increasingly stressed out.
However, we have had one planning success. Unlike the United Kingdom, we introduced the retail planning guidelines to promote healthy competition while at the same time protecting town centres and preventing out-of-town retail developments that destroy local businesses.
The publication of the Competition Authority's report on the retail planning system is the opening salvo in a debate of profound importance - not only to the retail sector but to the kind of country and the kind of communities we want to live in.
The focus of the report is on the impact of the retail planning guidelines on competition in the retail sector. It argues that the existence of the guidelines, the cap on the size of stores and the ban on out-of-town retail developments has discouraged new entrants, limited competition and choice for consumers, and led to higher prices.
All of these points are highly debatable.
What cannot be argued, however, is that allowing out-of-town superstores will have a profoundly negative impact on the economies of communities across Ireland.
According to research in the UK, the opening of a superstore can lead to the closure of up to 150 local stores. Not only do these stores close but there is also a knock-on effect in terms of job losses among local service providers who supply them, such as accountants, insurance brokers and local food producers, builders, electricians and painters.
If you want to see the impact of out-of-town retailing, all you have to do is go to Britain or Northern Ireland and take a walk around once-thriving high streets which now have only pubs and fast-food joints. Forty two per cent of small English towns and villages no longer have a shop of any kind.
Between 1997 and 2002, specialised stores including butchers, bakers, fishmongers, and newsagents selling confectionery, tobacco and newspapers closed at the rate of 50 per week. It's not just small food retailers that close but non-food retailers such as electrical stores, hardware shops and pharmacies, as a large percentage of floor space in superstores is given over to non-food items.
Small and local suppliers are also put to the wall as superstores don't do business with them. In the past five years, VAT registrations for small-scale food manufacturers in the UK have fallen by almost 12 per cent.
What has this meant to consumers? Simply put, the average consumer in the UK now travels 893 miles annually to shop for food. Do we really want that kind of carbon footprint for consumers in Ireland? It is estimated between eight and 12 superstores could serve the entire country.
Local shops are a vital part the economy of rural towns and villages, buying a great deal of their services from neighbouring businesses.
They are also a vital part of the social infrastructure of a town - they are meeting places for the local community, places of interaction for people who might otherwise be socially isolated. For older people, and indeed younger people who do not have cars, they provide accessible shopping. Take them away and you lose one of the vital social glues that holds a community together.
Superstores are not central to attracting new entrants to the Irish market. For example, since the guidelines were introduced in 2000, Aldi and Lidl have opened about 120 stores, while retail space in the past five years has grown from 400,000sq m to 1.5 million square metres - enough space to create more than 188 Croke Parks.
Superstores do not provide greater choice. They kill off smaller competitors and leave people no choice but to travel long distances to do their shopping.
I don't believe the Irish really want to see their towns and villages suffer the same fate as their British counterparts. However, people must understand the everyday choices they make will ultimately shape the communities in which they live. If people bypass local stores to shop in multiples 20 miles away, then eventually these shops will close. You will have to travel 20 miles for even a pint of milk.
It is time for a debate on the kind of Ireland we want. One with vibrant or dying communities? A country of consumers or citizens? The retail planning guidelines have protected us from the worst excesses of what has happened in the UK. We need a full debate before we tamper with one of the few successes we have had in the area of planning.
• Sean Kelly is a former president of the GAA