Members will be more than a little surprised to learn that the Department of the Environment and Climate Change has resurrected the silly notion of charging a Levy on disposable cups.
In fact, they are doubling down on their silliness by considering that the way such a Levy would work would be that YOU, the retailer (and the café owner, the fast food outlet etc) would fund the levy by way of having to PAY AN EXTRA 20 CENT for EACH and EVERY cup you get from your supplier!!!
A letter from renowned consultancy firm Indecon arrived this week in connection with this proposal, asking the Association to forward a Questionnaire to the membership as part of a stakeholder consultation in advance of a Regulatory Impact Assessment being undertaken.
It was clear from the pre-populated questions that had a variety of multiple choice answers to select from that the authors have somewhere between little and very little understanding of retail and the extraordinary pressures our businesses are under on a daily basis.
They are obviously not aware that for every 1,000 cups we buy, a significant number of them do not go past our tills as sales; they can be damaged, used by customers as an extra sleeve, partially filled but left at the machine, used by people taking medicine, filled with milk, and of course, stolen. Yet you would be expected to pay an extra €200 per thousand cups, with NO chance of ever being able to recoup this in its entirety.
The original idea was that it would mirror the plastic bag charge, that it would be a separate line item on the pos/receipt and that Revenue would receive the money charged to the end user consumer.
This questionnaire even goes so far as to ask whether the retailer would charge all, some or no charge to their customer- we must ask here- how on earth could anyone believe that a “no “or” partial “ charge would make any commercial sense?
We have asked a number of manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, as well as other Representative bodies in the retail and hospitality sector to resist this exercise and seek meaningful , open and transparent discussions with both the Minister and his officials , talks that can lay before those concerned the actual scientific truths about reusable cups when compared to single use cups.
We will certainly keep you informed.
