Brian McHugh

And for us, the message today to businesses is you have to follow the law.

We may prosecute you if you don't.

And for consumers, the message is that if you see things that concern you that you believe are misleading, do contact the CCPC and we can and will take action where we see serious breaches of the law.

Absolutely.

We strongly agree with that.

This isn't just about the consumer.

This is about other businesses that are competing.

The tourist market in Ireland is a huge market.

It's really important for lots of businesses.

And we know that tourists want original products from Ireland that they can bring home to wherever they come from.

And it's important in terms of the reputation for Ireland for tourists and the experience that they have.

is really important for that industry.

So the action here by this business didn't just affect one individual consumer, it also affected the broader reputation of the Irish tourist industry and those businesses who are competing hard to try and get Irish products in front of consumers, tourists, so that they can buy them and bring them home.

So we think that having that level playing field for all businesses is a really important outcome in this case.

no we don't um so we carry out hundreds of inspections every year so um this year we're already at around 200 inspections but online and in store in all all parts of ireland and all different types of stores so we don't give um warning notice we we can and we do and when we're in the store we let the store manager know that we're there

And what we're doing, that would have been the same in this case as well.

But we don't give warning in advance.

And often, as you mentioned, the reason that we're there is we have had consumer complaints about potential breaches of the law.

So it's a really important driver of our inspection activity.

So again, we carry out hundreds of inspections, and on the back of that we would carry out a large number of enforcement actions.