Ms Patricia Byron:

I do not have the granular detail on the international front, but I have requested it and it is being looked at the moment. The detail I have been given suggests that we are in the top tier internationally on fatalities and injuries in having lower numbers.

We had an excellent conference in association with the EPA last week on the issue of chemicals. More than 200 delegates, many from abroad, attended it at one of the hotels in the Point Village. Apparently, we are seen as leaders in the field of health and safety in the chemical sector. I thought that was really interesting. We are very lucky to now have our ex-CEO, Dr. Sharon McGuinness, as the head of the European Chemicals Agency, ECHA.

I, too, am very much in favour of the circular economy. The key piece here is standards. If a standard is set, it cannot be diluted. The issue is to ascertain what the correct standard is. In my paper earlier, I used the word "balance". I have seen it in the financial services sector and in other regulatory areas. I am involved with Coimisiúin na Meán, chairing the ARC committee. It has to do a lot of work online and there is a big remit there. It is about balance, but when things go wrong, people do not worry about over-regulation.

I will give an example. We all go around with our mobile phones at the moment and they are being reconstituted. There are potential issues around the components and whether they are all good for us. I have no evidence to produce here or anything. Do we lower the standards because we can reconstitute all the phones and not sell new phones or do we keep to the standards? I think we have to keep to the standards and define that.