Ms Br?d O'Connell:

Businesses are there to make a profit but a lot of them do not give back to the community and are not as good to their employees. Many are not as invested in Ireland's reputation as Guaranteed Irish businesses. There is an opportunity to reward those businesses that see the bigger picture and that think more strategically on behalf of Ireland Inc. - I hate to use that phrase. They look at the bigger picture and at how to allow Ireland to thrive in that space. They also look at our citizens, wherever they are from. They are based here and Ireland is now their home and there is an opportunity for them to be weighted a little bit more favourably in public tenders. That is a complicated piece of work. We are aware of that and we are not advocating for protectionism.

I want to be very clear about that.

The third request is to have a value and a really broad and thorough understanding at Government level as to what Guaranteed Irish now stands for, as opposed to it being a symbol that people saw on food or manufactured goods. It is not that. In fact, the history book that my colleagues have here for members highlights that it was never that but that it was an easy thing for people to latch on to, and it took on a story of its own. The story really is that it was always a broad church. We have just pronounced and amplified that message in modern thinking.