Current Account

TDs backing Groceries Order may pay dearly: The days of the Groceries Order may be numbered, but no fewer than 17 Fianna Fáil TDs saw fit this week to speak at a party meeting against any change to the rules that prevent the below-cost selling of packaged goods.

This manoeuvre was not without precedent. Only weeks have elapsed since FF TDs intervened on behalf of their publican friends to block the introduction of café bar licences. Before that, they lobbied against the smoking ban. They seem now to be listening just as avidly to their local grocers.

Nothing new in that you might think. Fianna Fáil is always close to the business classes and the small shop lobby has been out in force to get its message across to TDs. But sectional sympathy for the small trader seems to ignore the wider interests of consumers, who must pay over the odds for basic goods as a direct result of the order. It may also prove unwise politically, for it appears to ignore growing anger about the rising cost of living. Not for nothing did the Rip-off Republic series strike such a chord.

Micheál Martin would do well to go the whole hog and abolish the order entirely. The TDs who favour its retention may well have concerns about the possible decimation of small shops, but that ignores the reality that small shops do not compete on price, even with the order.

Neither do consumers want the corner shop shut down. As the cost of living goes only upwards, they merely want better value in the shops. With the health service pay fiasco merely the latest episode in a pattern of Government waste, TDs ignore that at their peril.

Roche keeps e-voting system on life support

Still on Government waste, remarks last week by Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, seemed to rule out any possibility that the dreaded electronic voting system will be used in the next general election.

Polling day could be as far as 20 months away, leaving plenty of time to complete the lengthy process of testing the machines, but after so much bad publicity - not to mention expenditure of €52 million - only an unwise Government would foist this system on voters any time soon.

Still, there remains a slight possibility that the ill-fated system will, after all, be put into use at some unknown time in the future. According to a notice posted this week on the etenders.gov.ie website, the Commission on Electronic Voting has a tender out for "software assurance" and "testing services" on the system. The estimated value of the contract is €119,400 and there'll be plenty time to carry out the work. Lots of it.

Ibec gets sinking feeling

At the Ibec press conference this week to mark its pre-budget submission to the Government, director general Turlough O'Sullivan, having answered a number of questions to do with Irish Ferries, said he wouldn't be answering any more as the topic for the day was the pre-budget submission. However, it seemed even he could not get the ferry crisis out of his mind. Talking about the success of the various partnership agreements to date, he spoke of how the economy had been "shipwrecked" in the 1980s until partnership came along and "steadied the ship" and led to foreign direct investment flowing in "at a rate of knots".

As for the pre-budget submission, it says that Ireland's costs are now so far ahead of those of our competitors, there's a danger they'll sink the economy...

Dell's taxing job search

Is something afoot at Dell's Irish operations? Current Account suspects a big announcement will be forthcoming before long, saying that the company is to headquarter its European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) corporate communications operations in Ireland.

How else to explain the phone calls some very senior communications officers at some of the biggest technology firms here received from a British-based recruitment company on behalf of Dell? According to one recipient - who would not come cheap - the recruiter indicated that the job was not a solitary post to run Irish operations, but part of a re-organisation for jobs that would be based in Ireland, not the UK, where Dell centres its communications division.

The move is likely to have something to do with generous tax supports for companies that headquarter aspects of their operations here.