Ms Br?d O'Connell:

I thank the Deputy. To be clear, when we talk about sustainability and ESG, Guaranteed Irish is really about the S and the G. It is about sustaining jobs, communities and provenance. Governance, of course, is really important for that. We work with our members in respect of education in the context of embarking on a sustainability journey, first and foremost, and then creating the awareness of how important this is with the other members.

I mentioned the 50:50 campaign. For the celebration of our 50th year, we are putting together a pot of €50,000 for a communications campaign for businesses that employ 50 or more people. One of the criteria in this competition is to look at trying to use other Guaranteed Irish members and sustain those other businesses. This is much of the role of the sustainability function. I have invited my colleague, Cleménce Jamet, to join us today. She is the head of sustainability in the organisation.

We are not environmentalists. We are very clear on what we are not. We are not taking this role and we are not purporting to be doing so. However, what we really would demand in our criteria is that businesses that wish to apply for the licence would show they are on a sustainable journey and open to improving all the time. Sustainability is going to be the buzzword for all the rest of our business lives. It will impact everybody in this room and the generation behind us, if the world survives that long. The journey is critical and it is important that we educate businesses in this space.

I will refer to our job across several areas. Ms Jamet can also come in on these aspects too. Some of the initiatives we have already started have been helpful to the members, while also highlighting to them how seriously we take this role. During Covid, we also looked at the lack of ethics for some of the sources where our products came from. We had to really question ourselves if we wanted to be overdependent on nations that do not, necessarily, look after their people and our planet. These locations are not sustaining jobs and enterprises as we see it. Our role in sustainability, therefore, is about education in the first instance. It is also about ensuring that our members sustain enterprises in our local communities throughout Ireland. Those communities can be the community of Ireland or small little towns and villages across the country.

That is important for us, as well as the educational piece. Ms Jamet will give an example of some of those initiatives we have already started.