Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

What steps do the Minister of State and the Department propose to take with regard to the mislabelling of food products imported to this country and represented to the consumer as Irish in origin when clearly they are not? A substantial amount of meat produce circulating in supermarket chains here is labelled as Irish or EU but does not come from the European market. It is imported into the European market and presented as EU produce and then imported into Ireland and repackaged and presented as Irish in origin. A great deal of information is available on this. What is the Department doing to stamp out this practice? Does the Minister of State agree it is pointless to have labelling if we cannot have confidence in what the labelling tells us?

Is there a degree of hypocrisy in addressing the issue of labelling when significant elements of the State's services, specifically areas of the health services, directly purchase food products from outside the European Union for the requirements of people here? We must lead by example and present the Irish people with food products in which they can have confidence and those grown at home are the best.

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