On food labelling laws - and this goes back to the programme for Government - it was recently brought to my attention that companies packaging foreign meat in Ireland, especially pig meat, are using loopholes to sell their products to consumers as Irish meat. All they have to do is print "ES" for Spain or "DK" for Denmark on the packaging and then confuse consumers by including an Irish name and a picture of our national flag. The latter makes it seem that what is contained in the package is domestic meat when it is, in fact, of foreign origin. If these companies import meat and slice it, they can then state that it is Irish meat. It is like our Lord turning water into wine.

It is ridiculous and wrong. It is hurting our own people in the sector and is misleading the public, who think they are buying Irish meat.

As I understand it, the rules around country of origin labelling are very clear. One has to put the country of origin on a product but producers may sometimes use clever branding to disguise where a product comes from and to mislead people, perhaps by using particular colours or names that people associate with one country. The best thing people can do is look at the label, which has to indicate very clearly the country of origin.