Sir, – I’ve read your article “Ireland’s high-price culture: who is to blame?” (Business, June 25th). The first three paragraphs treat us to an account of the 2008 banking crash and what part if any that the general public had in causing it. This we are told “brings us to Ireland’s current high-price culture”. Really? How?
Several “plausible explanations” are listed. One is lack of competition, and an example cited is big variations in the price of the same product in the same area. If products were the same price in every shop in an area surely that would be evidence of lack of competition and there would be no point in shopping around. We are also told that Ireland has a higher proportion of high-price convenient shops than other countries. I think that the business term is convenience shops or stores, and anyway we can generally shop elsewhere.
There seems to be a thread running through the article not so gently suggesting that the consumer is to blame. We are told that we conflate frugality with stinginess, won’t make a fuss about bad service, and regard questioning a bill as torture. Darragh Cassidy of Bonkers.ie is quoted as saying that watching prices or shopping around is kind of looked down on here. Is there any evidence for these assertions? There is strangely not much mention of the various very profitable companies who charge these high prices in the first place.
The article concludes: “There is unfortunately no smoking gun, but a string of partial, plausible explanations, one being a consumer that doesn’t like to complain”.
So it is mainly the consumer?
I can enjoy reading opinion pieces, whether I agree with them or not, but reading that article was not time well spent. – Yours, etc,
SEAN O’BYRNE,
Sallins,
Co Kildare.