Overseas suppliers frequently dump cheap grocery products on the Republic's market, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

Mr Pat O'Connor, commercial manager of Dublin Meath Growers Ltd, which supplies fresh produce to Tesco and Marks and Spencer, told the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small Business that big overseas players sometimes dumped products they could not sell at home in the Republic.

"They store it in Dublin for a few days and its is sold to the big chains," he said. Mr O'Connor added that Tesco did not buy these products.

He told the committee that a lack of scale and higher production costs in the Republic kept the price of groceries higher than in the UK. The company recently did a random survey of prices in Tesco in Northern Ireland, which is supplied from Britain, and found that goods there were 15 per cent cheaper on average.