Love Irish Food celebrated its first birthday recently. The organisation, a marketing group for Irish food and drink brands, has grown its membership from 29 to 77 brands in its first year. The premise behind the organisation is very simple, buying more Irish made products helps Irish businesses survive and protects Irish jobs. That's something that we can all be proud of and get involved with.
The ultimate goal of Love Irish Food is to protect Irish jobs with simple choices. The people involved in the organisation believe that behind every Irish product on the shelves is a real home-grown story about people working from farm to factory to supermarket floor to bring you your great quality Irish product. This makes sense on many levels. It is not a prescriptive organisation…ultimately they are asking people to consider buying just one more Irish brand in their grocery shop, one more can make all the difference.
The Love Irish Food people reckon that if just one third of households in Ireland (that’s 400,000) spent an average of €1.67 more on an Irish item each week for a year €35 million would be generated for the Irish economy. That’s a lot of money.
A new report from the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland published on Monday showed that a quarter of jobs were lost in the industry between 2008 and 2010. The report also showed that the Government’s plan to tackle cross border shopping in last year’s Budget has not stopped shoppers going north. It had been hoped that the decision in the UK to increase VAT from 15% to 17.5% coupled with the reduction of the Irish rate of VAT from 21.5% to 21% would stabilise the market, which it did for the first six months after the excise cuts were announced, there was even an increase in sales of 6.4%. However cross border shopping is beginning to pick up again and will, as before, hit sales here.
Another alarming statistic recently came from Retail Excellence Ireland who said that 35,000 retail industry employees have lost their jobs since the start of 2009.
All of this ties in with Galway Chamber’s annual Sp€nd Christmas in Galway campaign. Simply put, and mentioned in this column last week, for the last number of years we have been urging visitors and Galwegians alike to spend as much of their time and their money as they possibly can, here in Galway. It’s a ‘shop local’ campaign based around the run up to the festive season when we urge everyone, on behalf of our members, to buy their Christmas gifts locally, to shop for food and drink locally, to party locally and to encourage others to visit Galway.
Right now there are a lot of things in this country over which we have no control. However, we have control over what we spend and where we spend it. If one person, Sp€nding Christmas in Galway, keeps another person in a job, then it’s worthwhile. To get involved in the Sp€nd Christmas in Galway Campaign simply contact Galway Chamber on 091563536 or email info@galwaychamber.com
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