When is an Irish breakfast not an Irish breakfast? When it should properly be called a Dutch breakfast or a Danish breakfast, because the bacon or ham have come from one of these countries.

And does your Thai chicken really come all the way from Thailand? Sometimes, yes.

Or how would you like your steak done, sir? Brazilian style, if it happens to come in from South America.

If you are eating out in Ireland, you really don't know where your food comes from. Unlike retail outlets, restaurants and hotels don't have to say where their product is sourced or who produced it.

"Consumers assume when they are eating out that common ingredients are sourced locally, that meat is Irish meat. Not always. Like any open economy, there is trade inwards and outwards and there are imports in areas like pigmeat and poultry, " Mr Aidan Cotter, Bord Bia's director of operations, explains.

"Much of the imports do end up in the food service sector because it's relatively anonymous and doesn't have to be labelled in the restaurant as to where the ingredients come from."

Mr Cotter says the Republic imported 40,000 tonnes of pigmeat last year, while we exported 120,000 tonnes.

"It's partly because we're importing cuts in bigger demand in the Irish market and exporting the cuts in less demand. Some people say there's a deficit of bacon backs - due to the demand for rashers." The Netherlands, Britain, Denmark and France are the principal sources of this pigmeat.

In the first quarter of this year, the Republic imported around 100 tonnes of chicken from Thailand out of a total of 11,000 tonnes of imported chicken.

The sources included Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium in the EU and even Brazil. In that same period, the Republic produced 32,000 tonnes here. "Statistics may well hide imports ultimately coming from those countries," he says.

But Mr Cotter does not think safety is the issue. "There are hygiene requirements which protect consumers and they apply across the board. Consumers who feel they are eating Irish when they are eating a product from another country should be informed as to the origin. There should be more transparency," he says.

Bord Bia believes there is room for improvement by the food service sector in sourcing their ingredients in Ireland and especially in their own areas.

"I do believe there would be kudos. Research indicates that there is a demand for local ingredients."

But it can be difficult for regional producers as Mr Keith Molloy, general manager of meat processor A. Molloy & Sons in Waterford, has found when he sells into some hotels, B&Bs and restaurants - and not just locally, but nationally.

He says it is increasingly difficult to get into the food service area with a quality product. "There is always cheaper product when you're dealing with a processed product. I could make a sausage for something like 20p but I refuse to make that because it would be of very poor quality and I wouldn't put my name on it. I don't know where they come from, but there is always someone doing it.

"Beef is coming in from Brazil, into Waterford and all over, quite a lot of beef. It's very poor quality.

"It has a very long shelf life, which suggests that something is done to it. But it's coming in cheaply and a lot of places wouldn't just really care. Therefore, they compromise on quality.

"I have striploins (of beef) going into hotels at £3.80 a pound and the Brazilian neat is £2.70. I can't compete with that, basically where they decide to go for lesser quality."

In Clonakilty in west Cork, Mr Diarmuid O'Sullivan of Irish Yogurts Ltd reports some success in his own area and his yoghurts are served in Aer Lingus's premier class. "We didn't canvas Aer Lingus, they rang us," he says.

His is a traditional churn-made yoghurt with natural ingredients. "Even the milk comes from my brother's farm, so we know about the well-being of the animals and that's what Aer Lingus likes about our product. It's traditional and has a point of difference - it's nice and thick, with great mouth feel.

The customer needs that point of difference," he says. And he does not try to compete on price.

"It's a premium product."

FΘile Bia, a week-long celebration and promotion of Irish food in restaurants and hotels around the State, starts on September 25th. It is part of a year-long effort to promote Irish food for people eating out. The object is to increase the amount of transparency for consumers in terms of where food products come from and from which quality assurance scheme in particular.

Ms Georgina O'Sullivan, Bord Bia's home market manager, says that in its third year, FΘile Bia is putting more emphasis on the sourcing and provenance of food in hotels and restaurants, because consumer research shows that people are concerned about where their food comes from.

"At retail level there's labelling and quality assurance so much in evidence. The service industry may be lagging a little behind. I think it's something they have to reckon with. So much food is eaten out of home now, it becomes a growing concern as to how that food is sourced."

FΘile Bia is a partnership between Bord Bia, the Irish Hotels Federation and the Restaurants' Association of Ireland. During the week, hotels and restaurants participating will provide special menus, featuring the best of Irish ingredients and will display a special certificate to show they are taking part.

However, out of some 1,800 hotels and restaurants, only 300 so far have signed up. Is Bord Bia disappointed?

Ms O'Sullivan says not. It intends to focus on those 300, encouraging them to attract as many customers as possible during the week and perhaps hold tastings of local product, such as cheeses or organic fruit and vegetables.

"Suppliers often pass up local producers. Something they could easily do with better contact and more communication would be to link between local producers and local users."

And as for the producers, she says: "We could be making a lot more for the food service area than maybe we are already doing. People tend to make straight away for the retailer, but the growth is in food service."

She has found what she describes as "a virtual paradise of produce close to the restaurant she and her husband run in County Wicklow. Ms Penny Lange is an organic farmer with 60 acres on which she produces 10 acres of vegetables and herbs and cattle and sheep on the rest, right on her doorstep. "I never knew about her and she never knew about me," Ms O'Sullivan recalls. "She has lovely produce that are a joy to use."

Ms Lange says the restaurants she supplies are "people who are versatile, who are a pleasure to work with and I can always bring them something nice. If they are not versatile in their approach and if they don't want fresh and Irish, what can I do for them? I can't give them courgettes and tomatoes in December."

Her meat goes to specialist butchers and, like the vegetables, to the Dublin Food Co-operative. "The demand has never wavered. It's not about whether you're organic or not, it's about a whole honesty and integrity in the whole process from the seed to what's going out."