The minister for finance in his recent Budget speech – seemed to imply that by cutting the duty on booze – he could stop people going to Northern Ireland to do their shopping. He must think that everyone is piling over the border to stock up on cheap drink – well he musn’t have seen the recent CSO figures on cross-border shopping.
The CSO survey into Cross Border shopping was based on figures from April to June 2009.
The average household spend per trip was €286 . Of this – the highest amount was spent on groceries (€114 ).
Breakdown of spending on other categories:
€77 on Clothing and durables
€53 on Other
€32 on Alcohol – only 11% of the total
€11 on Cosmetics
Other stats show that 44% of trips involved the purchase of Alcohol – while 79% bought groceries and 42% bought clothing etc. 26% bought cosmetics and 19% “Other”
The drop in alcohol prices here in Ireland will have very little effect on the thousands of people going to Northern Ireland to shop. If the government think it will – they are either misleading us or they are stupid.
Ref: Cso Report