|
Supermarket overcharging claims to be investigated AN
investigation into why customers are being overcharged in Irish supermarkets
compared with England and the North of Ireland should be expanded to include
possible price-fixing according to a consumer watchdog.
An industry survey of 4,000 Tesco products revealed the British supermarket
giant charges Irish customers an average of 15 per cent more.
Tesco has blamed the higher charges on increased operating costs but the
National Consumer Agency is to look at the survey as part of a wider investigation
into price differences across all the big supermarket chains in Ireland,
England and the North of Ireland.
Among the survey findings were that a pack of 18 Durex condoms, retailing
at ?18.56 in the Republic, can be bought ?13 cheaper in a Tesco in the
North.
But the Consumer Association of Ireland (CAI) said that any investigation
should also look at the possibility of price-fixing between the major
supermarkets.
“Consumers already know that there’s a gap in the pricing,”
the CAI’s Dermott Jewell maintained.
“But if there is any allegation of price-fixing, then most certainly
we would welcome whatever can be done to identify it.”
TD to marry
FORMER Irish cabinet Minister Dr James McDaid is set to marry for the
second time later this week.
The 57-year-old Fianna Fáil TD is due to tie the knot with partner
Siobhan O’Donnell on Saturday.
The ceremony has been booked in a registry office in Derry close to their
home in Letterkenny in Co. Donegal.
The couple signified their intent to marry in early September to satisfy
a legal requirement in the North of Ireland that they give at least two
weeks’ notice.
Once the proper notice is given, couples are no longer required to be
resident in the North to marry there.
Dr McDaid and his first wife Marguerite split several years ago and were
divorced in 2004.
soldier killed
A US army investigation has been launched after an Irish woman was killed
while on duty in Afghanistan.
US Central Command ordered the probe after 30-year-old soldier Ciara Durkin
originally from the island of Eanach Mheain in Connemara was killed last
week.
The young soldier who was living in Quincy in Massachusetts was assigned
to the army’s Task Force Diamond unit when she died in combat. |
