Mr. Conall O'Caoimh:

I thank the members for their questions. I will start with the question on my organisation as my answering it is certainly a preliminary step in understanding some of the other questions. We consider our organisation to be a fair trade organisation in that we are seeking to make trade fairer. Members will know the Fairtrade label. The trade union movement, the credit union movement, the co-operative movement and the groups that lobby the World Trade Organization are all part of a movement. I was before this committee a number of times during the terms of previous Dála in that my background involves my having worked on and campaigned on the trade rules. People who do this and those who watch what the multinationals are doing, including what happened in Bangladesh recently, are part of different branches of a movement that is the fair trade movement. It has a number of strands. It is probably the one with the label on the chocolate or coffee that people identify with most, but all are working together to try to achieve fair trade.

In 1996, I was in Mozambique and that is where I first had the idea for this organisation. I returned and got a job in Comhlámh and later in Dóchas working on the trade rules policy. While we were working on getting the rules right at the World Trade Organization – I was in Doha, Hong Kong and Cancún processing the rules – it was acknowledged that African countries and other developing countries need support to actually build the business relationships that will result in trade.

Our first task is to identify producers. Michelle Hardiman, my colleague in the Gallery, recently travelled around southern Africa trying to find a fully African T-shirt. There are T-shirts but the cloth may be imported from India or China. We are trying to get a fully African T-shirt. We can get some but we do not know what happens on the farms. We are trying to get T-shirts that have full certification regarding what happens on the farm.

With regard to the Fairtrade label that members know, none of the Fairtrade-grown cotton is actually turned into thread in Africa. It is all taken away to Asia and America to be turned into thread. Therefore, we have had to examine some of the other systems; otherwise we cannot have a fully African T-shirt. We are trying to propose to people in the market that they buy a fully African one. There is the Cotton made in Africa initiative and the Better Cotton initiative, and there is a couple of organic schemes that measure and audit what happens on the farms. We try to ensure that the factories are ones that pay workers well and which are audited internationally. That is what we mean by fair trade. We have beers from four different countries on the market. That is probably the product I can point members to most easily. If the bar of the Houses wants to host an event serving the beer, we can arrange for a supply. We can help to arrange to match-make in that regard.

Fairtrade does not certify beers, yet the brewery that we link with in Kenya has 970 people employed in the best quality jobs in that country. They have the best conditions. There are 5,000 farmers growing the input products and their conditions are the very same as Fairtrade conditions.