Sinead Gibney

Yeah, I mean, I would agree certainly that there's a jobs element to this because, I mean, the real people or the real cost of this, these goods, is the cost to the environment, the cost to the people who are in the supply chains, essentially people in some cases who are in slave labour.

And then, of course, the other cost is to those companies who are meeting the appropriate standards that we expect as European consumers.

So I do agree that it should work as a deterrent because at the moment what we're seeing is just this massive inpouring of

cheap, fast fashion, low quality goods that are ending up in landfills.

I mean, they go, maybe sometimes they stop on their way to the landfill at charity shops.

People who frequent charity shops will see that, that these shops are just full of these goods at the moment.

But I mean, for me, I think the supply chain issue, the ethical issues around the production of this material and the environmental cost is really one of the biggest focuses.

And absolutely, we need to address that.

Of course, it's going to hurt people who are counting their pennies.

But this is not the way to allow people to address cost of living.

There are other ways.

And as a party, we believe that's...

in the provision of quality public services and in lowering costs for people on a day-to-day basis.

So, you know, addressing the cost of living crisis, addressing rents and all of those things.

That's where we need to do it.

Well, I...

I don't know if I would make that assumption that everybody knows about it.

And I think there has to be deterrence if it raises awareness amongst consumers that there are ethical issues.

I mean, we saw the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive as this kind of first great white hope of how we would address some of these issues.

But unfortunately, it was watered down through one of the omnibus packages at EU level so that it really just doesn't have much of an impact at all anyway.