Don’t go there, Mary Lou.
It’s not even funny to think about it.
Nonetheless, she asked Micheál Martin the same question three times: “Taoiseach, do you do a weekly shop?”
He didn’t give an answer, so she muttered one under her breath each time instead.
“Clearly, he doesn’t.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t.”
Thank God for that, we gasped.
Imagine Micheál Martin doing your weekly shop? He’d refuse to look at a biscuit, the house would be awash with broccoli and you’d die for the want of a cheese and onion crisp.
The man cannot be allowed near a shopping trolley.
There was a distinct feeling of deja-vu on Tuesday when the big ticket item in the Leaders’ Questions aisle was the rocketing price of groceries. The Dáil has done some vigorous shopping around in these parts before.
With always the same question at the end: What is the Government going to do about this?
“Prices are out of control” the Sinn Féin leader said, giving a brief rundown of shopping list essentials. “In the last year alone, a pound of butter has gone up one euro, a kilo of Irish cheddar cheese has gone up 57 cent and two litres of milk has gone up 27 cent.”
In her follow-up, where she wondered if the Taoiseach appreciates how much people have to shell out for their groceries these days, she gave more examples. “Over five years, sugar up 54 per cent, fillet of cod up 55 per cent, pork sausages 21 per cent, lamb by 48 per cent, spaghetti by 46 per cent ... This is the reality people are facing every week when they go to the supermarket to do their shop.”
She even quoted our own consumer champion, Conor Pope, who wrote in his Pricewatch column last week that a kilo of chicken costing €4.99 three years ago now costs €11. We presume he wasn’t referring to the same kilo of chicken, although it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard of groceries walking off the shelf.
As the lists came forth we waited and waited, but she never mentioned prawns.
This came as a terrible disappointment to those of us who recall the time back in 2013 when former TV3 journalist Ursula Halligan joined Mary Lou as she was doing her weekly shop in Superquinn and all anyone remembered from the interview was that a leading Sinn Féin politician was buying frozen prawns.
The past was on Mary Lou’s mind too, but it was the recent past. Cian O’Callaghan of the Social Democrats was similarly exercised, both of them harking back to May of 2023 when Neale Richmond, then a minister of State at the Department of Trade and Enterprise, was the government tough guy assigned to take on the profiteering supermarkets and bring them to heel.
Neale is a rugby player. A tight head prop. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was sending him in to collapse the cosy scrum of the big grocery chains.
There was going to be an emergency meeting of the ‘Retail Forum’ where Neale would bash heads together until the supermarkets brought down their prices.
Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns didn’t have much confidence in this forum delivering results. She said energy companies were “simply ignoring” Government calls to reduce prices and she doubted if the supermarkets would.
The government was already starting talks on the back foot, she noted. “None of the big supermarket groups publish their profits for their operations here. They tell us they’re not profiteering, but they refuse to come clean about their profit margins.”
Would they finally reveal their profits at this crunch summit with bruiser Neale?
He said at the time he was positively looking forward to it. There would be “a frank exchange” where “direct questions” would be asked.
He expected prices would come down at the checkouts for consumers.
And was he going to ask them about disclosing those profits?
“Yes,” said Neale, back then.
Coincidentally, minister of State Richmond happened to be in the chamber to hear the Sinn Féin leader and Soc Dem deputy leader tell the House that he didn’t do a great job putting manners on the grocery giants.
“Taoiseach, in May 2023, your colleague minister Neale Richmond told the public that he had this situation under control. He puffed out his chest, he called in the big supermarket chains and declared that they had just six weeks to get prices down.”
Neale looked highly affronted.
“Well, that was 110 weeks ago, Taoiseach, and clearly the minister failed to exert any real pressure on those retailers because he was duly and unceremoniously ignored and things have only got worse for customers at the checkouts.”
Neale loudly muttered something at Mary Lou then returned to reading his phone.
She dismissed his great pronouncements of 2023 as “bull and bluster”. Nothing more than “a single limp intervention” to tackle runaway food prices.
Cian O’Callaghan totally agreed.
The government had promised to address soaring food prices. There was to be this big showdown meeting between Richmond and the retailers.
“And what happened at that meeting was a talking shop he convened for optics. He turned up, wagged his finger and everyone went home.”
Neale mumbled loudly and wagged his finger before going back to reading his phone.
But grocery prices are higher now than they ever have been, so if you think that was a success it certainly hasn’t been.”
The TD for Dublin Bay North said people suspect they are being “ripped off and price-gouged in this country” but this can’t be proved because there is no transparency when it comes to supermarket profits.
And so, two years on and a new baby later for Holly Cairns, who is currently on maternity leave, Cian O’Callaghan once again poses the question she asked in 2023 about forcing the supermarkets to publish their profits.
“You could act,” he tells Micheál. “I am asking you are you going to require all supermarket chains and retailers to do this?”
It’s a simple question, he adds, so will the Taoiseach reply without “diversionary answers or distractions?”
Micheál looks up, looking distracted.
“The question is?”
Well, if he’d been listening in the first place he would know what was asked, retorted Cian, repeating the question.
The Taoiseach, ignoring the request not to deviate, possibly because he didn’t hear that either, replied: “Well, first of all, I just want to say to the deputy, he has a tremendous habit of asserting what I said earlier. Of course, which I didn’t say at all...”
Jennifer Whitmore of the Social Democrats threw her eyes to heaven. “How do you know? You weren’t listening.”
