CROSS-BORDER shopping is destroying the economy and driving young people to emigrate, it has been claimed.
People south of the Border who shop in Northern Ireland should put the savings in a deposit account, which they could then use to buy tickets to Australia to visit their children who were forced out of Ireland as it declined, according to leading economist Jim Power.
Mr Power told a food conference yesterday that the biggest single threat to the food sector was the ‘‘Tesco-isation’’ of the retail grocery market, where stores stocked the same products regardless of where they were in Britain and Ireland.
Suppliers were under ‘‘phenomenal’’ pressure from this trend, and consumers failed to realise that when they availed of a ‘‘buy one, get one free’’ offer, it was the supplier that paid, not the retailer.
He also criticised consumer organisations who claim that shopping is ‘‘all about price”, and said cheap food policies force producers to cut corners.
Food suppliers could not accept the inevitability of globalisation and the growing power of the retail multiples, and needed to fight back, he said.
The agri-food sector had a key role to play in the recovery of the Irish economy.
Mr Power, who is chairman of the Love Irish Food campaign to promote Irish-manufactured products, said there was a huge amount of confusion in the minds of consumers about what constituted an Irish-made product. Love Irish Food, which requires member brands to be at least 80 per cent Irish-manufactured, was trying to eradicate this confusion.
He was speaking at an open meeting hosted by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s (FSAI) consultative council to discuss the merits of buying Irish food.
Consumers’ Association of Ireland chief executive Dermott Jewell criticised vague and misleading food labels which tried to pass products off as Irish-made when they were not.
He said some food producers were not doing consumers any favours with vague labels such as ‘‘good for your body and your soul’’ or ‘‘because you’re worth it’’.
Familiar products such as Good Time Irish marmalade or Siúcra were no longer manufactured in Ireland, he pointed out. Some products failed to indicate the country of manufacture on the label, or gave an Irish address only when they were actually made overseas.
Consumers were eager to go back to basics and to support artisan producers but they were not always getting the best, Mr Jewell said. ‘‘Quite a number of products are being misrepresented, and consumers don’t know about it.”
Paul Kelly of Food and Drink Industry Ireland admitted there were some ‘‘inconsistencies’’ in food labelling, but said it was clear in the vast majority of cases where food came from.
Consumer lawyer Raymond O’Rourke predicted that the European Parliament would shortly introduce mandatory country-of- origin labelling on food products. He said Ireland needed to develop its artisan food specialities and to seek the same sort of EU designation for the best of them. To date, only four Irish products have been awarded this designation.