Covid crisis: Food supplies secure and festive stock in place

Robust plans are in place to ensure goods remain on our shelves even as supply chains come under pressure, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has said .

People should be “confident”of this, he said yesterday. “But this is something that we will have to monitor and act on every day. We are in a situation with supply chains that are coming under pressure, for many different reasons.”

He was speaking as a French ban on accompanied freight from the UK is in place until at least midnight tonight due to a mutated strain of Covid-19 in southern England. It means no lorries can travel to and from Dover closing the land bridge from Ireland to France,

However retailers stress there is no immediate threat to food supplies in the Republic and almost all of the Christmas stock sourced externally is already here.

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The first sign of a pinch point in supermarkets is likely to be on unseasonal produce – fruits, vegetables and salad leaves grown in southern Europe through the winter.

“We are not going to run out of food, that is the first thing,” said TU Dublin academic Damien O’Reilly. “But we might see shortages in some areas for a week or 10 days in the post-Christmas period.”

He added that “one of the few positives of Brexit is that there has been a lot of stockpiling . . . so there will be warehouses across the country full of dried and tinned goods.”

He also said that in terms of dairy and meat, we are or easily can be self-sufficient. “Most of the packaged goods are either already here or in the UK so as long as those routes stay open there should be no problems.”

He highlighted contingency plans which should allow Irish retailers and wholesalers to establish new routes from continental Europe into Ireland at least in the medium term. Although he said that in the short term the issue would have to be resolved to ensure food supplies into and out of the United Kingdom.

Retailers with operations in Ireland and the UK stressed they did not foresee supply problems in the days ahead.

"Due to Brexit we have been . . . preparing for possible outcomes for more than three years," said a Lidl spokeswoman. "We have also been downsizing our reliance on the mainland UK landbridge for quite some time, as well as planning alternative haulier routes."

Buying director at Aldi John Curtin said all its Christmas stock transported through the UK has arrived in Ireland and has been distributed to stores ahead of Christmas Day. Its network of stores are fully stocked, he added.

A Tesco spokeswoman said its supply chain “is robust. Essential food supply chain transit is continuing as normal so we don’t anticipate any product shortages ahead of Christmas. We continue to work hard to operate a safe and easy shopping trip in what is anticipated to be a busy Christmas week. We encourage customers not to alter their normal shopping habits.”

Marks & Spencer also downplayed supply worries over the festive season. Retail Ireland, the Ibec group that represents sector employers, said that due to Brexit retailers have contingency plans to manage disruption to supply chains from, and through, the UK.