Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for being here with us. I am looking at the Guaranteed Irish symbol here and it is a very recognisable one. I thank the organisation for the work it does. It is very important. There are very few, and increasingly fewer and fewer, symbols that we can put our hand on and know it is a good one when we see it. Fair play to Guaranteed Irish because it has managed to weather the impact of social media and every other kind of storm.

I wish to talk a bit about the benefits of buying guaranteed Irish products in terms of sustainability. Personally, I think this is really important and I was pleased to see it mentioned in the opening remarks. To quote one line of the written statement submitted to the committee, "If you support a local business, you are not just securing those jobs, you are also reducing carbon miles and building trust equity into your supply chain". More and more, from my perspective and from what I am hearing, this is becoming the deciding factor. I ask Ms O'Connell to elaborate on this point a little more in terms of the capacity of Guaranteed Irish companies to help us in terms of sustainability. This is what people want. This is not to discount the fact that people want value or to ignore that we are in a cost-of-living crisis. While many people would love to be able to always and only ethically purchase, sometimes people cannot. At the end of the day, people need to feed their families. They have to buy what they need. In terms of sustainability, though, there is a huge job of work to be done. I am interested to know what role Guaranteed Irish and Guaranteed Irish companies can play in this regard.