The Chairman of the National Off-Licence Association, Jim McCabe, has welcomed the reduction in excise duty announced in today's Budget, but warned that while the more competitive pricing of alcohol in the Republic will on the one hand be of significant benefit to responsible consumers, the new prices must not be exploited by supermarkets and giant grocery retailers in a manner that will result in alcohol abuse.  At the moment the large multiples are using alcohol as a loss leader in order to gain extra footfall.  This decrease should be acted upon in a responsible manner.

“The National Off-Licence Association has been actively campaigning for a reduction in excise duty and VAT on alcohol in order to address the extreme imbalance in pricing that has resulted in devastating losses in trade to cross-border retailers. Independent off-licences, some 350 of which are members of our Association have seen losses in business of some 20% since the ill-advised VAT increase in last years Budget. The new duty rates will lead to a degree of restoration of fair competition against UK prices, although the business lost over the last year will never be recouped”, said Mr McCabe.

“Concerns have been expressed that lower prices for alcohol in the Republic could lead to alcohol abuse. The means to avoid such a situation arising is through responsible trading and in order to achieve that our Association has been highlighting the urgent need for legislation to introduce mandatory training of all staff directly engaged in selling alcohol to the public. Such training is already a requirement for all independent specialist off-licences within our membership.

“Cross-border shoppers have been purchasing alcohol in large volumes and while the new pricing will hopefully lead to a return to purchasing locally, there is now no incentive or purpose in such high volume purchasing. The danger, however, is that the large supermarket multiples and discounters will seek to exploit the reduced prices to stimulate high volume purchases in the Republic. This will be highly irresponsible and will serve as yet another example of the need for alcohol licensing to be reinforced.

“The Minister for Justice has deferred implementing new legislation against the irresponsible promotion of high volumes of cheap alcohol in the expectation that a voluntary code of practice would deter large supermarkets and multiples from marketing in a manner that could lead to alcohol abuse. The reality is that these large retailers have been paying lip service to the voluntary code and have in effect been stimulating bulk purchasing as can be clearly seen with their blatant advertising and promotion of cheap alcohol. The legislation needs to be enacted in full and mandatory staff training needs to be incorporated in the legislation.

Mr McCabe highlighted that due to the timing of the new excise duty level, which comes into effect after the off-trade has purchased its pre-Christmas stock, the new pricing may take some time depending when the order comes into effect.