Mayo Fianna Fáil TD Dara Calleary is alerting farmers to the opening of a public consultation on the primary legislation needed to establish a new Office of a National Food Ombudsman or Regulator.
Deputy Calleary said: "This is a key Programme for Government commitment, and the new Office will have a role in analysing and reporting on price and market data in Ireland and will also incorporate Enforcement Authority functions required by the Unfair Trading Practices Directive.
"In addition to establishing the new Office, the primary legislation may introduce rules that go beyond those included in the UTP Directive.
"The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is fully committed to ensuring fairness, equity and transparency in the agricultural and food supply chain.
"The establishment of the new Office is an important step towards achieving that. The outcome of this consultation will help to determine the principles and policies to be included in the new legislation and the powers to be assigned to the new Office. I encourage all stakeholders to participate in the consultation to help define the future role of the new Office."
The consultation can be found at gov.ie - Public Consultation by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine on the functions to be assigned to a new Office (National Food Ombudsman/Regulator )/Equivalent (www.gov.ie ) and at ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/NationalFoodOmbudsmanorRegulatorConsultation2021 and will be open until Wednesday, May 26.
A public consultation was previously carried out on the UTP directive itself. An overview of the submissions made under that consultation can also be found at gov.ie - Transposition of Unfair Trading Practices (UTP ) Directive (EU ) 2019/633 Submissions made to 2019 public consultation (www.gov.ie )
