The Government has been accused of creating the impression it is addressing rising food prices “while not actually doing anything” to tackle systemic issues.
A group representing thousands of dairy farmers said the Government has “wasted three years foostering around” before deciding legislation was necessary to force large retail chains to outline how they establish their profit margins.
In recent weeks, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Martin Heydon, said new regulations aimed at improving transparency across the agri-food supply chain would come into force this year.
It comes three years after a regulator’s office was established to conduct price and market analysis.
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Under the changes, the regulator will be granted the authority to compel retailers to supply information on prices and margins if not done so voluntarily.
The president of Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), Denis Drennan, told The Irish Times that farmers were “disappointed but not completely surprised” by “the dawdling progress” being made to investigate food pricing, particularly at the retail end, and to make it transparent.
He said the blame rested with Government, not the regulator, and pointed out that legislation which “was obviously required on day one” will only be implemented from the end of the year.
Data from retail analysts Worldpanel, published this week, put grocery price inflation at 6.25 per cent in the four weeks to the end of December, up slightly on the previous month.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), meanwhile, highlighted a 4 per cent annual increase in the price of food and non-alcoholic drinks. Far more significant increases were found across a range of products such as meat, chocolate and confectionery, milk, cheese and eggs, and bread and cereals.
Mr Drennan said there was “something wearingly familiar about this official tactic of announcing a measure and then waiting for some inexplicable duration before giving the responsible agency the powers necessary to deal with the very questions that gave rise to the need for such an agency or measure in the first place.”
He said farmers were not expecting the agri-food regulator to solve the systemic problems around erosion of their margins, but added that they were “entitled to expect some meaningful analysis and reportage on the question of margins and who was getting what within the food supply chain, and they were not even getting that”.
He pointed to situations where farm gate prices fell without corresponding drops in retail prices and questioned where that margin went. The regulator, he suggested, was best placed to ask that question even if retailers will not be under a legal obligation to supply data until this time next year.
“There’s no urgency, no sense of engagement. It’s performative and designed to convey the impression that ‘something is being done’ while not actually doing anything.”
A spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture said the regulator had received co-operation from most operators but “a number” had failed to comply with requests for information on a voluntary basis.
She said the extension of the regulator’s powers involved “novel legislation which goes beyond the EU market transparency regulations” and required “a detailed consultative and legislative process”.
“The new regulations will come into force on December 31st “allowing sufficient lead-in time for the agri-food regulator to develop the necessary systems, processes and procedures to implement the new powers effectively”.
