People Before Profit has called on the State to cap the price of essential items such as bread and milk in supermarkets.
Inflation peaked in October 2022 at 9.2% and is forecast to average out at 1.9% this year.
Despite this, many people are still struggling to buy food and TD Bríd Smith said they are being “fleeced” by big corporations.
“I think the CEO of Tesco is doing very nicely, thank you very much,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.
“There was a report in the Sunday Business Post that he has earned in the last year 427 times the average wage of a worker in Tesco.
“That’s grossly obscene and this is the sort of profit margins and remunerations of those at the top [who benefit from the mantra of] ‘let the winner win and competition flow.’
“It doesn’t work for ordinary people and there are reports from Barbados that shows poverty levels rising and parents struggling to feed their children the basics.”
A man in a the supermarket.In opposition to price caps, economist and local election candidate Cormac Lucey described State involvement in business as “generally a bad idea”.
“[Tesco’s] gross profit margin - the difference between the price they sell at and price they buy at - is just over 5%,” he said.
“So, if you buy something in Tesco for €10, on average Tesco will have paid €9.43 for what they’ve put on the shelf.
“That’s a very thin margin and that is the result of a very efficient system.”
Fresh fruit displayed in a supermarket.Mr Lucey suggested that those who oppose the current model of free-market competition should provide an alternative.
“It’s entirely open to Bríd and her colleagues to open up their own retail chain and offer goods at a cheaper price than these people who they allege are fleecing others,” he said.
“We have that in Britain, we have a Co-Op chain of shops - [it’s] not particularly well attended, not particularly price competitive.”
In January, the CSO launched a Household Budget Survey to determine how much Irish people spend on their weekly shop.
Main image: Shoppers browsing in a supermarket. Picture by: Robert K. Chin / Alamy
