Mr. Ray Dolan:

The Deputy asked some very good questions. We are involved in a very useful project in Fettercairn, a community food initiative, which helps people learn about food and nutrition. It extends to providing facilities to mind children while their parents go to the classes. It is halfway through its three-year cycle and I understand it is a great success, which is a great credit to the people doing it. Often these communities are not ready for the bureaucracy needed to be accountable for State money, or to meet all our requirements for sending in forms and mini-accounts. We have 20 projects, ten of which finished in 2013 and ten which began in 2013. They all run on three-year cycles and focus on people who need that kind of basic education.

In one case a community had put in a request to rent a bus to bring people to the local town and go to the supermarket. I wondered why they were doing that, but it was to educate people about what is on the supermarket shelves, what is worth taking down and what they should not eat, and to explain fruit or vegetables they had never heard of. That campaign has been a great success, so much so that we hope after a three-year cycle they will be able to run themselves or find financing somewhere else. They will often set up market gardens and sell the produce, and open a coffee shop, and that money keeps them going. Many of the first tranche of initiatives, 2010-13, are still going as a result of the kick start we gave them.

The food chain has been very topical since the horsemeat scandal. Last week, a North-South Ministerial Council meeting took place with both Ministers in Derry, and safefood brought in Professor Chris Elliott, an eminent professor of food science from Queen’s University Belfast. He made the Deputy's point to the Ministers that it is not too soon to consider what we could do on the island of Ireland to put a policy in place to address that, whether for whistleblowers or something else. It has been done in other countries, so there is a model. That is topical and I hope we can move on it.

The enteric reference laboratory is one of our functions. A lot of early work was done on it. The present system whereby we send samples to Colindale does not cost us money and it works very well, but an enteric reference laboratory on the island of Ireland would be an even better solution. Resources are an issue. Getting all the key players together is a difficult project and we have not managed to get it across the line. From time to time we revisit it and it is probably time to do it again. Dr. Kearney has been very much involved in this for the past 15 years and can give a front-line view of it.