New measures will soon allow consumers to choose restaurants and hotels on the basis of their food safety record as well their menus.
From next month the Food Safety Authority of Ireland will publish, on its website, a list of premises that have been served with closure orders and improvement orders.
The chief executive of the FSAI said consumers paid the tax bill and they were entitled to this information.
Further moves toward transparency on standards in premises that prepare, process, manufacture, distribute, sell or store food are planned. Speaking at a World Health Organisation/FSAI conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr Stuart Slorach, deputy director-general of the National Food Administration, Sweden, explained that local authorities there sent a list of routine inspection results on food businesses to the national newspapers as well as the health department.
"This places an obligation on the inspectorate to carry out inspections and report their results in a very standardised way," he said. When the list was published consumers took note and those with particularly poor standards of hygiene would probably go out of business, said Mr Slorach.
In Canada, the results of the latest routine inspection were posted on the door of the restaurant, said Dr Patrick Wall.
"We are studying models in other countries and we will follow the best practice here," he said.
More than 30 countries, including those seeking membership of the European Union, were represented at the first WHO European conference on regulatory systems for safe food. The non-EU countries suggested that many of the EU food scares - such as BSE in Britain, dioxins in Belgium and sewage contaminated feed in France - originated within the EU while the states seeking membership have had no such major food crises.
Mr Marco Jemini, acting director and food safety regional adviser of WHO, said food safety control agencies should be transparent, independent, science-based organisations that worked in collaboration with national governments to the benefit of public health. "Ireland, with its FSAI accountable to the Department of Health and Children, is seen as a good model," he said.