John Downes asks the big shops if and how they go about ensuring that the clothes they sell are not produced in sweatshops by underage workers
Two boys' school shirts for a fiver. A boys' white polo T-shirt: €2.50. A girls' grey pinafore: €12.
But was your child's new school uniform produced by child sweatshop labourers in another part of this globalised world? What proof can Irish retailers offer to the contrary? Can they guarantee, for example, that school clothes bought for a child are not themselves being produced by children?
Margaret Carr, Oxfam Ireland's Fair Trade manager, believes such guarantees may be difficult for many Irish retailers to provide. She says some Irish companies pay lip-service to the idea of corporate social responsibility by signing up to what Oxfam considers is the bare minimum required.
But retailers also have a responsibility to ensure that their suppliers are independently verified so that what they are claiming about the sourcing of their garments stands up to scrutiny, she says.
"Without information on how it is audited, a list of standards means nothing," she explains. "For example, suppliers have to do more than just say, 'We don't allow children [ to work]'."
By buying one item of school clothing from each of four major retailers, The Irish Times decided to find out exactly what they would - and would not - tell us about the products on sale in their shops. Noting the manufacturers' reference numbers, we asked a number of shops to trace goods to the country and factory in which they were made.
Could they assure us that the person making the product was not a child? Was it ethically produced? Do they have an ethical sourcing policy? And how is this inspected?
Not all were willing to respond.
It's not difficult to see that anybody buying two boys' white shirts for €5 at Marks and Spencer on Henry Street in Dublin is getting a bargain. A market leader in corporate social responsibility (CSR), M&S's UK-based head of CSR, Mike Barry, revealed that the shirt was made in a factory in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
The company has supplied M&S for about four years, and the factory passed an independent ethical audit of its operations "with flying colours" last June, said Barry.
The minimum age of workers in the factory is 18, and it provides maternity benefits, free transport and free health checks - all of which are significant bonuses for anyone working in the developing world.
Employees may work a weekly maximum of 48 hours plus 12 hours overtime, with at least one day off a week guaranteed. This translates into a 10-hour day, six days a week - what most of us in the western world would consider a pretty long week.
"You have to remember in a lot of these countries, people want to do the hours to earn the money to trade themselves out of poverty," Barry explains. "We might find that a little excessive here in the West, but in fact in the developing world that's very good, and to stick to it is good.
"Across a supply chain of 100,000 people, I'm sure there'll be instances where there's things going on where we'd prefer not to be. But generally our standards are demonstrably better than the average on the high street."
Next up was Dunnes Stores. With some 123 shops employing 18,000 people here, in the UK and in Spain, it is perhaps the best-known Irish retailer selling clothes produced under its own brand name.
The item of clothing chosen for this test was a pair of trousers for a seven-year-old boy, sold for €12 under the St Bernard label. The label on the garment does not say where it was manufactured, although it does have Dunnes Stores in Andalucia, Spain, printed on it.
After several attempts to contact a Dunnes spokeswoman, she eventually confirmed that the privately owned company does not have a published ethical sourcing policy "as such". She said she would respond to a number of questions.
These included information about the factory producing the trousers, whether children were allowed to work there, and what assurances Dunnes Stores could provide that products on sale were not produced in a so-called sweatshop.
However, despite numerous attempts to elicit a response - and an initial suggestion that obtaining the information should not be difficult - the spokeswoman did not respond further.
The label on a "Primark essentials" white polo T-shirt, for a boy aged five to six, bought in Penneys on Henry Street in Dublin for €2.50, had no details on where it was made. A Penneys spokeswoman forwarded a copy of the Primark/Penneys supplier code of conduct, which includes commitments to freedom of association, safe working conditions, and payment of a living wage.
Penneys also revealed the T-shirt came from Egypt, with factories supplying the company subject to audits both by Penneys managers and an independent auditing company. The company said it was happy "all reasonable care" had been taken to ensure ethical standards are met regarding the T-shirt.
The Penneys code of conduct defines a child as anyone under 15, or 14 if the local minimum age law in a developing country is set at this level.
The company pointed out that this is in accordance with the International Labour Organisation rules. It is also an age at which most Irish children are preparing for their Junior Cert.
The final shop surveyed was Arnotts of Dublin. As a department store rather than an own-brand retailer, it produces few of its own clothes, instead relying on buying in well-known brands as well as selling through concession stores. One such store is Adams, where a grey pinafore for a five-year-old girl was on sale for €12.25.
Arnotts's director of marketing Eddie Shanahan says the shop is proactive in making its suppliers and concession stores aware that it will not tolerate any abuses of its sourcing policy, which says it will source only where "human rights and human dignity are fully respected".
Where it sources directly, Arnotts or its agents undertake factory inspections prior to conducting business, and thereafter where appropriate.
But Arnotts was unwilling to answer specific questions on the uniform sold. When asked how it checks that its suppliers were producing according to ethical standards, Shanahan reiterated the company's policy on the issue, and said it "would not tolerate any breaches". He also revealed that it had not to date been prompted to terminate an agreement with a brand or concession store for breaching its ethical trading rules.
Key to any ethical sourcing policy is the extent to which a shop's policy is monitored, says Tina Roche of Business in the Community.
"Often a company will have standards that are second to none. But the challenge is to know they are being monitored," she explains. "So it's not just about policies. Anybody can have a policy. It's about impact."
The Adams concession shop in Arnotts revealed that the minimum age for employment in the factory in Bangladesh, owned by a company called Ananta, is 18. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is 900 taka per month (just over €11), with employees making Adams products paid 1,050 taka (€13). Overtime is paid at time and a half, and lunch and transport are provided. Adams's audit team last visited the factory in April.
What our brief survey clearly shows is that Irish retailers have adopted varied approaches to the issue of ethical sourcing. Some do seem to be making genuine efforts to ensure the products they sell are ethically produced. But much also depends on what that term actually means - and the minimum standards that are deemed acceptable.
Other retailers chose to stress their unwillingness to tolerate any breach of their supplier code but were less specific on the procedures they have put in place to ensure these breaches are not occurring.
Out of the four retailers surveyed, Dunnes Stores was the only one to refuse to respond. The reason is unknown.