Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 9 June 2020
289. Deputy Seán Haughey asked the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation the measures she can take to encourage consumers to buy Irish products and services in shops and retail outlets and which are sourced here, rather than buying such products and services online and sourced outside the EU; if she will initiate a buy Irish campaign; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10063/20]
View answerI would very much like to see consumers here buying locally produced and sourced products in order particularly to help retailers and producers recover as quickly as possible from the effects of Covid-19 on businesses and jobs. It is not open to me however to initiate a Buy Irish campaign or to take other measures to influence consumers to buy Irish goods and services. In 1981, the European Commission took infringement proceedings against a Buy Irish campaign then in operation which received financial and other support from the Irish Government. In its subsequent judgment (Commission v Ireland, case C-249/81), the European Court of Justice held that the campaign was a reflection of the Irish Government’s intention to substitute domestic products for imported products on the Irish market and thereby to check the flow of imports from other Member States. A campaign of this kind was subject to the prohibition on measures that have equivalent effects to a quantitative restriction on imports under what is now Article 34 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In the view of the Court, even measures adopted by the government of a Member State which do not have binding effect may be capable of influencing the conduct of consumers and traders in that Member State and thus of frustrating the Treaty and the principle of the free movement of goods.
