Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge and welcome this afternoon's presentation on the important issue of the challenges facing the fruit and vegetables industry in Ireland and particularly the issue of food waste, an issue I have been chasing for a serious period of time.

I will start with Professor Hennessy. I acknowledge her contribution to the Food Vision 2030 strategy. On where we are as a society with regard to food waste, I read quite a disturbing figure during the week. It was said that food waste contributes somewhere in the region of 8% to 10% of Ireland's greenhouse gases. If you look at that figure in the context of where we are going with other issues this committee is dealing with and other issues in our society, the need to look at a campaign on the issue of food waste is clear. What are Professor Hennessy's views on what such a campaign should entail?

Professor Hennessy mentioned that we were the fifth or seventh worst offender out of the 27 European Union member states. It is not great to be considered a laggard regarding food waste. Will she expand on where the problem actually is regarding food waste? Is it on the producer side as regards the amount of land, fertiliser, pesticides and labour being used for a product that might not even get to the shelf? It could be disposed of because it does not match certain marketplace criteria regarding size, shape or whatever else. On how households deal with food waste, there is over-purchasing at times but there are also other issues such as whether there should be a label indicating when a product is due to be eaten and how such labels are looked upon behind the actual marketplace. More important are restaurants and food outlets. These are a really significant issue. Professor O'Riordan might also comment on how we could run a decent proactive campaign involving all of the actors to ensure we reach our potential in reducing food waste.

I also read during the week that there is potential for the European Commission to lean on Ireland to make sure we have a waste reduction policy in place by 2030. Any information on that would also be helpful in this debate. Is the European Union going to bring forward recommendations regarding food waste? If so, do we have any indication of what they are going to mean to the marketplace? The headline figure of 221,000 tonnes of food wasted every year, which is a statistic from 2021, is very significant. It is an amazing statistic in many ways. We need a campaign. It could be argued that, when there has been so much talk about climate change and everything else, this is a very basic measure that could potentially address 10% of our greenhouse gas emissions. With the deepest respect, I do not hear it mentioned anywhere. I ask both Professor O'Riordan and Professor Hennessy for their views on that issue.