IN ENNISKILLEN a man is loading baby formula into his shopping trolley with astonishing speed. Two packets, four packets, six packets. Baby food and baby formula are one of the magnets that draw Southern shoppers over the Border. Many of them are young couples with small children who frequently mention Aptamil, a breast-milk substitute which is much cheaper in the North.
Children are a constant theme amongst Southern shoppers in the North. In the medicines aisle at the Asda supermarket in Enniskillen a woman with a country accent is on her mobile phone, reading out the contents of the shelves in front of her. “Will they not take the Benylin? There’s Bonjela here. Do you need Bonjela or anything like that?”
But every type of shopper is here – except the old.
In the alcoholic beverages section a very smart young woman is getting a shelf-stacker to unpack a box of vodka. The very smart young woman wants the box to carry the six bottles of vodka she is buying. She emphatically denies that she is in business. “No, no, I’m a nurse.”
Up in the staff meeting room there are signs reminding Asda workers to be warm and welcoming to every customer.
But with the hum coming from the shop floor and the cars from Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Longford, Cavan – even from Galway and Mayo – parked out front, that reminder seems kind of superfluous.
Dubliners go to Newry. The west of Ireland goes to Enniskillen.
You cannot decide whether you are witnessing an invasion or a united Ireland.
Peter Beckett, who manages the Enniskillen branch of Asda, is a happy man. “I love a buzz,” he says. “I love a challenge.”
Beckett has already been to the UK this year, on January 12th, to collect the award for Asda Store of the Year. At Christmas the Enniskillen branch of Asda was the second busiest in the UK. The busiest store, in Essex, is three times the size of the Enniskillen store, which measures 42,000 sq ft. “Although we hope to do an extension this year, to get more volume on the shelves at peak times.”
Beckett has seen all this before. “Twenty years ago when it was pound for punt,” he saw busloads of shoppers coming from the South. This Christmas he had busloads from Sligo and Cavan.
We have a conversation about the bus expeditions of the 1980s. Customs men, with astonishing courage, used to board the buses and threaten to confiscate the Southern housewives’ shopping. Now the customs officers are gone, the roads are better and everyone has a car.
Keeping the shelves stocked is a permanent problem for Asda staff. The store is open 24 hours a day, and checkouts open at 1pm on Sundays. “We have 50 colleagues on at night, replenishing the shelves, and 50 on during the day. Since October alone we have 100 new colleagues,“ says Beckett.
He has heard about the Dundalk Superquinn closing. He can’t explain why shopping for groceries is 30 per cent dearer in the South. Perhaps it’s the price of property or the minimum wage? In the North the minimum wage is £5.85 per hour.
Asda cannot keep Hennessy brandy – £18.56 for a large bottle which costs €46 in the South – on the shelves. Beckett has tried to limit the amount of wine that people from the South buy to six bottles per customer after meeting someone who was buying 200 bottles of wine for their wedding.
In October the queues at the checkouts were eight, nine, 10 people deep. Beckett had to persuade Asda to let him move a photo shop so that he could add 10 new checkouts. Now there are 32.
At one of them Colin Stewart of Mohill, Co Leitrim, is stacking the conveyor belt. He shops here once a week and reckons that he saves about 40 per cent on his food bill “taking in special offers”. He has six boys and he can get 1½ kilos of steak here for £10. The large packet of Cocopops is £3 here and €5 in the South. “
The Government would want to catch themselves on,” he says. He’s a shopkeeper himself – he owns a Euroshop. “VAT’s too dear.”
What really made him furious was when his wife needed a prescription for several items, for which a local pharmacist was going to charge €101. He got on the phone and found that the same prescription could be filled in Enniskillen for £45.
“That’s just what life’s like in Ireland in general. If you want anything over the basics you have to pay through the nose.”
Up in the small Asda restaurant Trisha and Noel from Gowra, Co Cavan, are having lunch with their two little girls, who are eight months and two years.
“We’re Tesco shoppers but we come here for nappies and baby food,” says Trisha. “Baby formula is £10 here and the same brand is €14 at home. I would do a main shop here when I come, but I wouldn’t get potatoes here or meat. It’s just that English meat.”
Trisha’s sister has four children and the Northern prices make a difference. “And the facilities here are very good. There’s a microwave so you can heat their bottles or a dinner for them. They have disposable tubs here to put them in, and disposable bibs. At home you have to go to a pub to ask them to heat something for the kids, and you always feel you’re in the way.”
Noel, who works in a factory which makes PVC sheeting, likes the baby-changing facilities. Asda used to provide free nappies.
“There’s a place in there for them, but they stopped. I presume people were robbing them,”says Trisha. “That happened at Tesco as well.”
In Newry on Friday morning the workmen at the Canal Court Hotel, which is offering a new special rate to Southern shoppers, are building a new smoking area.
A local shop assistant remembers how, before Christmas, she opened the premises an hour early and Southern shoppers ran in at 8am in the morning. They bought men’s Wrangler jeans which are sold in Newry for £22.49, and sell in the South, her customers told her, for €70 per pair.
“They’re buying five or six pairs. They’re at the till point laughing,” says this young woman. “They’re looking at each other in amusement when you give them their change.”
“I do feel bad,” says Miriam, who drove up from Donaghmede in north Dublin to shop at Sainsburys. “I’d rather be spending my money down South when people are losing their jobs. But baby formula is half price. One of my daughters has an allergy and you can get UHT goats’ milk up here that’s not available in Dublin. I go to the butchers at home.”
Anne-Marie Farrell drove up with five friends after they had dropped their kids to school. She is from Artane, Dublin. “ It’s the first time for ages,” she says. “Toilet rolls, washing powder, so many things are cheaper.” She reaches into her shopping trolley. “Four toilet rolls for 41p, the Tesco brand is €1.09. This big baby powder is £1.55 and down South it’s €2.07 for the smaller one. Paracetamol is 17p up here and €1.85 in Tesco. I’ve three kids – five, seven and 14. It’s well worth coming.”
Back in Enniskillen it is dark but the shopping day is not over in this 24-hour land. The Hennessy brandy is gone from Asda’s shelves – again. Martin and Catherine are from Swinford, Co Mayo. They have four children. They come to Enniskillen three or four times a year, and buy non-perishables and toiletries. They are entering Asda at about 7pm , just as Emma Jackson and Susan Carey are leaving. Emma and Susan are 18 and 22, and from Co Cavan. “The DVDs are half price and CDs are £10 new, whereas they’re €20 at home.
Emma has just bought 100 Lambert Butler cigarettes for £24 “Back home they are €8 for 20. You can get three bottles of wine here for a tenner. You can get 18 cans of beer for £7. And the clothes are good too, over in the Erne shopping centre. They’re better quality, nicer actually. ”
Emma and Susan are good friends. “We used to live together, but now we both live with our parents. The cost of living is too much.”