The Director of Consumer Affairs, Mr William Fagan, recently said he was in favour of grey imports. "It keeps people on their toes." He was referring to a phenomenon called the grey market where designer goods and clothing are sold at cheaper prices in some stores.

Such goods are not counterfeit but these cost-savings have been achieved by the distribution of the goods through unapproved channels.

For those involved in the grey market, it is a practise that is easy to justify. "It is something that allows competition to occur in a market where there isn't any," said a spokesman for Tesco UK, a retail chain which is highly active in the grey market.

To understand how some retailers can sell a premiership team football jersey for £25, when an identical jersey is on sale in other outlets for £45, it is worth going back to the plant where the items will have been made.

The owners of clothing brands, such as Adidas or Tommy Hilfiger, commission factories to make their products. Manufacturing plants in locations such as Sri Lanka, Romania and Turkey are preferred, in order that costs are kept down.

At this point, the brand owner can lose part of the control over trademarked goods. From the early manufacturing stage, and at various points along the distribution channel, grey entreprenuers actively seek ways to sell these goods cheaply in markets where higher prices are charged for the same products.

For example, one way a manufacturer can facilitate this is by producing more Calvin Klein tee-shirts than have been ordered by the brand owner. The bulk of the clothing passes along the approved channel, while the surplus finds its way to a variety of markets where cost-savings are passed on to consumers.

Grey goods can be found at almost every point of the distribution chain. A wholesaler overestimates how much stock it requires from the manufacturer and is left with a surplus which eventually turns up on the grey market.

Retailers go bankrupt and a whole batch of stock can go grey. All of the above can happen purely by chance, but often such developments are deliberately orchestrated.

According to one industry source, the grey market has emerged because, in recent years, consumers are opting to judge the quality of goods by their brand. "There is a moral argument against consumers being sucked into paying more for their branded products than they should be," he said.

The big brand names, he said, kept prices on their goods artificially high in an effort to create an exclusivity about the products. "The fact is that these are mass produced items, there is something wrong about charging £25 for what is just another tee-shirt," he added.

Tesco Ireland sources goods on the grey market and sells them in two of their branches in Monaghan and Tallaght. Cut price Sony Handicams and designer sportswear are just some of the goods that have been available to customers in the past.

However, recent EU legislation has made things more difficult for `grey' marketeers. Last July an EU court ruled that `grey' market goods could not be sourced outside the 15 member states. This meant that if the `grey' goods had been bought in say, the US, it would not be possible for retailers to sell them on within the EU.

After the judgment was made, the Director of Consumer Affairs told journalists why he was not happy with the ruling. "It would be unfortunate for consumers if it did apply here . . . my own view is that I'm not terribly happy with a situation where a person's only crime is to sell these products," he said.

Despite the ban, many retailers, especially in Britain, continue to sell grey goods sourced outside the EU, to the annoyance of the big brand bosses. Some firms contend that such goods are likely to be counterfeit or even, in the case of pharmaceutical products, dangerous.

This is vigorously refuted by grey marketeers, who maintain they stock exactly the same products but sell them for less.

While it is difficult not to welcome the emergence of the grey market, it is understandable that brand owners are perturbed by it.

According to Ms Kathryn Lucey of IBEC, the big companies' annoyance is partly due to the fact that they have indeed invested a lot of time and money building up a brand. "Nike or Reebock didn't spend millions getting the likes of David Beckham to advertise their gear so that their trainers could be sold for £19.99," she says.

While the grey market is at its infancy in Ireland, all across Britain big sports brands have joined with The Sports Industry Federation to formulate their ideas on why grey goods are damaging to sport.

According to Mr Michael Johnson, chief executive of the federation, the sporting goods industry is committed to the long-term success and growth of grass roots sports which it sponsors.

"The supermarkets are aiming to increase their sales and performance, they are not aiming to develop sport for the good of the general public," he said.

Meanwhile, Tesco UK contends that what the big brands are really engaged in is exploitation of the people, including many in the working class who, without the grey market, would have no choice but to pay artificially high prices for goods like nylon football jerseys.

At the moment, bargain conscious shopper can travel all around Europe and, if they are a expert at working out exchange rates, can discover a big difference in the price of goods. The advent of the single European currency, the euro, will lead to total price visibility, making the benefits of the grey market even more apparent.