Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 129: To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment the steps the Government is taking to ensure that consumers can have access to information (details supplied). [9851/06]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Under consumer legislation the application of a description to a product as to its place of manufacture, production, processing, etc., is called a trade description under section 2 (1)(b) of the Consumer Information Act 1978. It is an offence to apply a false trade description to a product. However, there is no compulsion on suppliers to provide information on the origin of their products.

The EU Commission, however, published a draft Council regulation in December 2005 proposing the introduction of an origin marking regime to be introduced for certain specific products including textiles, clothing and shoes coming from outside the EU. Discussions are at an early stage on this proposal and are within the framework of the Article 133 committee, the common commercial policy. The common commercial policy covers trade rather than consumer matters.