A SURVEY showing that shoppers are paying 50 per cent more than people in the UK for similar items sold in British-owned stores in this country shows how badly Irish consumers are being ripped off, the Labour Party spokesman on consumer affairs, Senator Brendan Ryan, said yesterday.
The increase in the euro's value should have meant goods imported from sterling and dollar areas had become cheaper in recent months, he said, but the opposite had happened.
"Prices of imported goods are still going up and Irish consumers are being exploited and ripped off. We are now in the situation where jobs in Irish exporting companies are under threat because of the value of the euro, but we are not getting the price reductions that we were entitled to expect," he said.
This exploitation was fuelling inflation and adding to the general economic difficulties the country was facing, yet neither the Government nor the National Consumer Agency appeared to be treating the problem with the seriousness it called for, he added.
"The National Consumer Agency has been a great disappointment since it was established, and seems either unwilling or incapable of taking action in cases like this . . . Retailers were quick to increase prices when the euro was weak against sterling, and when the situation is now reversed we are entitled to see prices coming down rather than simply adding to the profits of huge multinational corporations," he said.
Mr Ryan said consumers should boycott shops that fail to reduce prices.
"If the Consumer Protection Act is not sufficiently strong then it must be amended to provide adequate protection for Irish consumers."
