Around the world, Ireland is associated with lush, rolling hills, verdant pastures and the excellent quality of livestock that grazes upon them. We mightn’t be regarded as the most adventurous with our cuisine but, by and large, our food products are synonymous with quality.
Bureaucracy is an integral part of the process of attaining the EU’s stamp of excellence under the Geographical Indication scheme. Between the three available categories – Protected Designation of Origin, Protected Geographical Indication, and Traditional Specialities Guaranteed – Irish producers have registered just five regional delicacies since the system was introduced in 1992.
Although the likes of Timoleague Brown Pudding, Connemara Hill Lamb and Clare Island Salmon find themselves in the exalted company of international power brands such as Champagne and Parma ham, many more farmers and food-producing businesses are reticent about putting their prized assets forward for EU-recognised status, and it shows in the stats.
Ireland’s five entries on the EU lists compares with 270 protected regional varieties from Italy, 219 from France and 181 from Spain. We also fare pretty poorly when it comes to countries of comparable size: we languish behind the likes of Slovenia – a nation with less than half our population, which has more than four times the number of registered regional specialities – Slovakia and Lithuania, while Luxembourg stalks one place behind us on the list of 28 countries, despite having a land mass the size of Limerick.
Our position at number 20 on that list is fairly representative of a country of Ireland’s size and population. However, Ireland’s three-decade headstart over many of the union’s newest entrants makes our placing less palatable.
The recent addition of Drogheda’s Oriel Sea Salt and Oriel Sea Minerals to the application list perhaps shows that a slightly more proactive approach is beginning to take root. But when you compare this to the 13 applications that have been brought by Croatia since its EU accession in 2013, it becomes clear that a shift in attitude is needed to optimise our potential.
Are we too modest?
What is the problem? Laziness? Apathy? That quintessentially Irish trait of casual modesty? All of the above, according to some key stakeholders.
Raymond O’Rourke is a renowned food lawyer, a long-time Geographical Indication evangelist and a member of the Taste Council of Ireland, which liaises with Teagasc, Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture to identify and encourage exceptional Irish brands.
“It’s quite a long process and it’s quite technical,” says O’Rourke. “The big difficulty in Ireland is that you have to form a group of six or seven producers in order to be eligible for any status. If I’m in Siena, for example, and there are seven families that produce an olive oil for Siena, they’ll join up and make the Siena olive oil society in order to promote the product from their place. It’s very difficult to get a producer group here, get them all together and get them to buy into the idea of going and protecting themselves.”
Declan Walsh was a key component in Ireland’s last notable Geographical Indication success story when the Waterford blaa secured PGI status in 2013. He agrees that cultural differences between Irish producers and their continental counterparts persist when it comes to protecting foods, but is a prime witness to the benefits of getting EU recognition.
When larger retailers started trying to replicate the centuries-old Huguenot bap, Walsh and a group of bakers came together and got the ball rolling on the application process. After 1½ years of meetings, preparations and deliberations, the blaa bakers – with considerable help from State bodies – eventually made their case and got Europe’s stamp of approval.
“People getting these designations are ‘de-risking’ their products. They’re getting the ultimate stamp in provenance. We’ve had to take recourse to that already to stop a very large distributor from ripping off our product, getting it made somewhere else and passing it off as the Waterford blaa.”
Such was the importance of the humble blaa’s new-found fame that the floury snack has come from relative obscurity to securing some very lucrative commercial deals with airlines, as well as hotels and restaurants as far afield as Abu Dhabi.
A New York Times article published last year under the headline "Dining in Dublin" made special reference to the blaa as well as boxty, another authentic Irish recipe from the Cavan-Monaghan area.
Marian Harkin, MEP for Ireland Midlands-North-West, is among a number of enthusiasts attempting to annex a place on Europe’s top table for the Border region’s premier potato pancake, but believes a significant change in mentality is needed from the Department of Agriculture and other State bodies regarding Irish food.
“I don’t think there’s enough promotion of the potential benefits. Trying to sell niche foods elsewhere isn’t an easy job, so if you can try and get something that lifts you on to the next step of course it’s important,” she says.
“Ireland, being known as a food-producing country, you’d imagine would have more designations than that, particularly in the context of trade deals with the US and international partners. Having those protections there is important.”
The implementation of a departmental strategy document on Geographical Indication foods, Linked to the Land, has provided impetus to the Irish cause, according to Raymond O'Rourke, but far more activity is needed if Ireland is to maximise the potential of the recent multimillion euro beef trade agreement with the US.
“With beef, they should go for one or two from around the country that either are particular breeds, or they’re speciality products or they’re grass-fed. Wouldn’t it be brilliant to have that PGO or PGI for that particular beef that people in the US wanted? It would make it so much easier to sell that product.
“One dangerous thing is that we’re along the same lines as the Netherlands. If you meet Dutch people from the department there, they say, ‘These PDOs/PGIs are rubbish’, and then I say to myself, well, what food have I ever heard that came from Holland that was wonderful?”
He believes that better use of the designation system could be hugely beneficial to the Irish economy, especially if our most identifiable foods from different regions can be aligned to tourist trails, as is done in central and eastern Europe.
“We’re always looking at France and Spain, and it’s wrong. What the Czechs did four or five years ago was they linked it with tourism, they went around the Czech Republic and they wanted the PDO/PGI that was linked with that region and that they could use in conjunction with tourist magazines,” he says.
The broad consensus is that we have the products. But if we can serve up a few more distinctive and recognisable treats for our export partners and nearest neighbours, there could be some tasty consequences for Irish farmers and food producers.
