Ms Br?d O'Connell:

I thank the Deputy. It is complicated. We are not for a moment saying otherwise. We have put ourselves into four boxes, namely, jobs, communities, provenance, and sustainability education. We really know our remit, which makes us really strong.

While we have managed to grow interest and awareness again, apart from big things like the global pandemic, the reality is that due to our "new Irish" - if you want to call our growing population that, and I do not really like that phrase - we are now a very multicultural country. They have brought their knowledge, awareness and education from their countries, and their expectations in a lot of cases are much higher. As a result, we are learning from them. It is no longer any good to say that a symbol means all things to all people. It has to be versatile and adaptable so that it means certain things to certain people but it still has its core principles. That is what Guaranteed Irish has, and I think we are very clear on that.

With regard to the Deputy's point about the different parts, the provenance, the 50% added value and the due diligence are very important to us, which is why we introduced an appraisals board. We oversee that. We are dependent on the member being honest in their application. We obviously do not have the resources to go out and police everybody. However, what you will find in good old Ireland is that a competitor will not be long telling you if they are not behaving. That is wonderful for us. It is our police and army on the ground. Those queries are very rare, to be fair.

We are a serious business. We take our role very seriously and we are committed to doing the right thing. We have an amazing team which delivers on that, and our standards are extremely high. We have positioned ourselves as being not interested in people who are trying to dupe the consumer. That is not going to wash and such people will lose. There is the possibility that they will lose the licence. At any stage, if there is misbehaviour, a licence can be withdrawn, which is really important.