Ms Angela Robinson:

The Department is responsible for the implementation of UN sustainable development goal No. 12.3. The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has overall responsibility for the sustainable development goals, SDGs, but that specific goal, No. 12.3, was designated to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for implementation. As part of that, the Senator might recall that the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, and the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, jointly launched the food waste prevention roadmap at the end of 2022. That has a number of actions to try to tackle food waste. One of the issues that has been a significant difficulty is the availability of data, particularly at primary production level. The EPA funded a research project that was completed in 2021 and used 2020 as a reference year. That was the first time there was any real data in respect of the primary production sector. The Department, the EPA and the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications are working together now to implement the roadmap. One of the key actions in the roadmap is trying to improve the availability of data. Following on from the launch of the roadmap, an action in it was to revise the food waste charter, which asks everybody along the food supply chain to commit to measuring food waste data and to report on those data.