{"id":574976,"date":"2026-07-30T05:59:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/574976\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T05:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T05:59:23","slug":"people-before-profit-want-state-owned-supermarkets-to-tackle-food-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/574976\/","title":{"rendered":"People Before Profit want State owned supermarkets to ‘tackle food poverty’"},"content":{"rendered":"

People Before Profit has called for the Government to open not for profit supermarkets in order to \u201ctackle food poverty\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposal comes after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he would open five discount stores that will sell essential food items 30% below standard retail prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The left-wing Mayor said the discount \u201cadds up to real money for New Yorkers\u201d, with an estimated annual saving of $1,000 (\u20ac880).\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Newstalk Breakfast<\/a>, People Before Profit Councillor Conor Reddy said the Government should follow his example and called for a pilot programme, with five discount stores in locations across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe propose to pay for it by implementing a tax on the largest grocery stores and on the fast food chains,\u201d Cllr Reddy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey got massive tax breaks last year with the VAT reduction in the budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it’s quite a modest proposal that we had, but it was to stock those basic essentials.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel it’s really necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fresh Fresh fruit. Picture by: Islandstock \/ Alamy.<\/p>\n

The Ballymun-Finglas Councillor described it as a \u201cmodest proposal\u201d that would only see healthy essential items sold in the discount stores, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as meat and other essentials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cllr Reddy continued that the stores could be funded by taxing the profits of supermarkets in Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea with the five pilots is that you’d locate them in areas with the highest level of need,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, you’d use things like deprivation index to guide that and other data that’s out there on food deserts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cllr Reddy added that he is relaxed about rich people travelling out of their way to shop at discount stores, a phenomenon he said would not be \u201cthe end of the world\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think competition for Tesco or Aldi or Lidl or anyone else is necessarily a bad thing,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo look, I think everyone deserves access to high quality, affordable produce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one in this country at the moment is really having a good time and prices have increased massively since 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

Main image: Fruit for sale in a supermarket. Picture by: Alamy.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People Before Profit has called for the Government to open not for profit supermarkets in order to \u201ctackle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-574976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}