Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 6 July 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

General Scheme of the Agricultural and Food Supply Chain Bill 2022: Discussion

Mr. Arnold Dillon:

The legislation refers to information that is already publicly available, so I guess it would depend on the nature of the information being gathered. There would be sensitivities, I think, for any player at the various stages of the supply chain and concerns about market-sensitive information being disclosed and how that would be used and how other parties would be subject to similar requests. To reiterate the point I made during my opening statement, when it comes to commercially sensitive issues of profit margins and relationships between retailers and their suppliers, it is not a subject we engage our members on at all and not an area on which we facilitate engagement between members. In that respect, that is an issue we have not discussed with members. When it comes to disclosing profit margins, there may be an issue with company law as to what information is available. When it comes to publicly available information, however, we envisage the office operating on that basis.