Christmas Bargin Butter Goes On Sale, Ireland 1977

Sale of EEC butter to reduce surplus stocks but the bargain butter price has many shoppers suspicious.

In a bid to boost consumption and lower the butter mountain the European Economic Community (EEC) Christmas butter goes on sale to Irish customers at a reduced price.

For a limited period 2,000 tonnes of EEC butter go on sale in Ireland at the reduced price of 29 pence for a pound. The cheap butter is distinguished by parchment wrappers marked ‘Christmas Butter’. Customers are being asked to stick to their allocation of one pound of butter per customer so that everyone can get a fair share.

Superquinn manager Jim Dwyer says that since his supermarket opened at 9.00 am the demand for the cheap butter,

Has been really fantastic.

With a week’s supply of butter already sold he is happy to see people getting it at almost half the usual price, but he feels in the long term it may damage total butter sales.

Today’s trading has been false trading.

However all of the shoppers interviewed are delighted to be bagging a bargain pound of butter while also helping to reduce the butter mountain.

It’s a jolly good way of getting rid of it.

Nevertheless some shoppers are suspicious about the quality of the butter as they fear it has been languishing in cold storage and may not taste nice.

I’ll try it anyway and see how we get on.

Some people appear to be unaware there is a limit on how much Christmas butter they can purchase. One woman with a large family would not mind if the cheap butter was restricted to old age pensioners and to people on lower incomes. Showing herself to be a good citizen, she puts one of her two pounds of butter back on the shelf.

An RTÉ News report broadcast on 2 December 1977. The reporter is Derek Davis.