Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

788. To ask the Minister for Health further to Parliamentary Question No. 539 of 12 June 2025, the reason her Department continues to deflect responsibility for bilingual food and drink labelling to the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht, despite that Department’s lack of a legislative role in the matter; if she will take ownership of this issue, given her Department’s control over food labelling law in Ireland; the way in which excluding the Irish language from the remit of the Inter-Departmental Group on the FIC Regulation complies with the State’s constitutional and legal obligations to promote Irish; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33828/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Food labelling in the EU is governed by Regulation (EU) No. 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers (FIC), for which my Department has responsibility.

Article 15, of the FIC Regulation, Language requirements, states that “mandatory food information shall appear in a language easily understood by the consumers of the Member States where a food is marketed.” and “the Member States in which a food is marketed may stipulate that the particulars shall be given in one or more languages from among the official languages of the Union”

In Ireland, the language requirements of the FIC Regulation are given effect in S.I. No. 556/2014 – European Union (Provision of Food Information to Consumers) Regulations 2014 which provides for bilingual labelling. This S.I. provides food business operators (FBOs) the flexibility to offer mandatory food information in either (a) the English language, or (b) the Irish language and the English language. This flexibility was provided to ensure that the legislation was not creating a barrier to intra-EU trade, for example, if FBOs have to produce separate labels for different markets.

In 2020, the EU Commission had indicated its intention to revise the FIC Regulation in respect of certain specific criteria. As my Department has responsibility for the FIC Regulation, it established an Inter-Departmental Group (IDG) in 2022 to examine the Commission’s proposed revision package and establish an Irish position. The members of the IDG were nominated by the relevant Departments and Agencies that had an involvement with the specific criteria in the revision package. The Terms of Reference (TORs) for the IDG state its role is to “identify and agree Ireland’s preferred policy options for each of the five elements of the FIC Regulation revision”. Therefore, it is not within the remit of this IDG to examine issues outside these TORs.

The Commission had committed to releasing a legislative proposal, including an impact assessment in late 2022 but these are still to be progressed. When the legislative proposal and impact assessment are progressed by the Commission, my Department will reconvene the IDG so that it can complete its deliberations.

As Minister with responsibility for the FIC Regulation, I currently have no plans to convene a Group to examine the current national flexibility which provides for mandatory food information in either (a) the English language, or (b) the Irish language and the English language. Developing policy options and potential legislative changes to encourage greater use of bilingual packaging by businesses in Ireland as a way to promote and increase the visibility of the Irish language is a matter for the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht.