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. Brian McHugh:
Yes, it would be. We have a very wide remit in competition, consumer protection, and financial education. Our budget is about €18 million, but it includes a variety of areas that would not be relevant. What we can and will do is engage with the office in terms of the type of work we used to do. We have a legal department that helped out with legal advice from time to time. We can talk about the type of work and resources we required. We had inspection teams that went out to retailers and those teams needed to be trained to do that and write reports. We had a structure whereby the commission members were involved and had discussions. At the start, we set up an event to engage with the industry. Advertisements were placed in trade journals which our communications department helped with. It is very hard to translate all of what I have just set out into one number. In helping the new office to understand the type of work that is required, it would be useful to say that while it was different, it certainly had some similarities so it can begin to put together a resource plan.