John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)
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Question 139: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the progress which has been made to date in 2005 on the proposal to explore the potential for green consumerism as was suggested as an action to be undertaken in his Department's sustainable development strategy 2003-05. [37929/05]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Green consumerism is about supporting sustainable consumer choices through ensuring the provision of accurate and credible social and environmental information on products and services, and is one of the objectives of my Department's sustainable development strategy.

To date in 2005, my Department has been considering the issue of green consumerism in the context of the EU environmental technologies action programme, ETAP. ETAP is a broad ranging programme which is designed to stimulate the development and uptake of environmental products and services. Raising consumer awareness is a key action in ETAP, with a particular emphasis on product labelling to ensure consumers have the necessary information to make informed choices. In addition to my Department's participation in the EU high level steering group for ETAP, and in the national ETAP stakeholder group, Enterprise Ireland recently participated in an ETAP seminar specifically targeted on raising business and consumer awareness of environmental products and services.

Another way in which my Department is seeking to promote green consumerism is by promoting the uptake of environmental management systems, EMSs, by SMEs through a multi-stakeholder working group which it has established. EMSs facilitate more informed consumer choice, as the EMS is a clear demonstration of a company's commitment to reducing its environmental impact.

I should also mention that the new National Consumer Agency, whose establishment has been approved by Government, will have specific statutory functions in the area of consumer education, awareness, information and advice so as to help ensure that the consumers are sufficiently empowered to make informed choices about the goods and services that they buy and use in their day to day lives.