Madam, - I refer to your report of July 22nd on a Fine Gael price survey in which prices for various items (including meat) were sampled in a number of supermarkets. This survey (and indeed your own Pricewatch column) appears to believe that the only place in Ireland where you can buy food is in a supermarket.
Not only do we still have about 1,300 butcher shops, with new ones opening in the recent past as increasing numbers of discerning consumers (many of them Irish Times readers!) seek alternatives to the bland monotony of supermarkets, but a number of surveys have found them on average to be cheaper than supermarkets (e.g. Farmers' Journal, Newstalk 106).
They, and other specialist food retailers (and producers - some of which were featured in your magazine on the same day) contribute to a diversity which, if it is ever lost to a world dominated by multinational retail monopolies, will be greatly lamented.
What a pity the only discussion we have in Ireland about these issues concerns the obsessive simplicities of so-called "Rip-off Ireland" - a notion which derives from knowing the price of everything and the value of, well, not quite nothing, but where quality, diversity, customer service, the environment, ethical production values (including a fair price for producers) car-dependency and the quality of our living spaces and communities appear to be of no consequence.
I could go on, but try www.tescopoly.org or Joanna Blythman's excellent book Shopped for starters. Eddie Hobbs probably hasn't read it. - Yours, etc,
PAT BRADY, Chief Executive, Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland, Dundrum, Dublin 14.