Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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85. To ask the Minister for Trade, Enterprise and Employment if he will consider increasing the awareness campaign for persons to buy Irish goods in advance of Christmas given the challenges businesses are facing. [41223/20]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Under the EU's Single Market rules Member States are prohibited from discriminating between the purchase of each others' products.  Nevertheless, Governments can advocate for buy local campaigns.  Buying locally sustains local economies and the growth of jobs and vibrant communities throughout Ireland.

In November, I launched the "Look For Local" campaign which is a new national, local and digital campaign to highlight local businesses in every county and encourage spend in the local economy by asking consumers and businesses to simply ‘look for local’ when buying goods and services.  The ‘Look for Local’ campaign from the Local Enterprise Offices is run in partnership with Enterprise Ireland and the local authorities.

The first phase of the campaign used local radio advertising to create awareness regionally.  The second phase of the campaign supplemented this with national advertising, local print advertising and a sustained social media and online marketing campaign all asking consumers and businesses to simply ‘Look for Local’ when buying goods and services this winter, to help support jobs in local communities.

On the campaign website, https://www.localenterprise.ie/lookforlocal there are now more than 4,200 local businesses listed, with a wide range of sectors represented across every county for consumers and businesses to search for what they are looking for in their locality. 

The "Look for Local" campaign will continue to run right up until Christmas on national and local radio stations, in local newspapers and across social media and digital platforms under the "Look For Local" hashtag.

Another buy local campaign was launched earlier this year by the Design and Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI) called ‘Made Local’ aimed at  sustaining Ireland’s design and craft sector during this recovery phase. It celebrated Irish creativity and aimed to inspire consumers, makers, shops and media.The "Made Local" campaign ran throughout the summer with 100 retailers involved in the campaign, supporting the work of DCCI’s 3,000 registered clients.

Recently, DCCI ran the Irish Business Design Challenge competition with a prize fund of €50,000. The prize fund was distributed to micro, small and medium Irish businesses, which have designed solutions to the various business and health and safety problems associated with the challenges of dealing with COVID 19, providing great marketing opportunities for these businesses.