Mr. Patrick Lalor:

The Organic Trust appreciates the opportunity to make a presentation to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The Organic Trust is an organic certification organisation approved by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine; the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in the United Kingdom and the EU. It is accredited to ISO 17065 by the Irish National Accreditation Board, INAB. We have been approved to operate as an organic certification body since 1992 and are now one of the leading organic certification organisations in Ireland. We employ a qualified organic inspectorate, a certification panel, a quality assurance manager and information technology administrator, in addition to administrative staff to service the needs of our members in complying with the prevailing organic regulations. We are included on the list of control bodies and authorities in the organic sector, published by the European Commission and operate under assigned competent authority control codes, IE-ORG-03 and GB-ORG-09. Our mission is to verify the integrity of organic produce certified by our organisation and sold under the Organic Trust and EU logos as satisfying the requirements of the organic regulations. This is our assurance to the customers that they are purchasing an organic product of integrity. We have provided the committee with a detailed written response to the 17 recommendations of the report on the 2015 organic farming scheme. Due, however, to time constraints, in today's presentation we will provide only a summary of our response to the most salient points. We hope the committee will take cognisance of the detail contained in our written submission during its subsequent deliberations. I will hand over to our chief executive officer, Ms Helen Scully.