The closure of many small independent shops in recent years has caused thousands of redundancies.
In the 1960s there were as many as sixteen thousand independent retail outlets in the Republic of Ireland. The introduction of big supermarket chains however meant that smaller grocery shops were unable to compete. A total of 3,071 shops went out of business between 1971 and 1979, with a loss of ten thousand jobs.
At present the larger retail stores are operating on a completely different scale due to their size and buying power maintains Ray Burke, director general of the Irish Association of Distributive Trades,
It's an unfair advantage...the government should take steps to correct it.
He believes that low-cost selling does not have any real benefits for either retailers or consumers and only leads to confusion,
It has very serious implications for the trade as a whole.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 28 October 1982. The reporter is Jacqueline Hayden.
