Victor Boyhan: Celebrating Irish Producers at Tesco Showcase

First I'd like to welcome the Ambassador and include Maria Barry, a great colleague and friend of mine in former years. Great to see you there, I didn't recognise you but particularly great to see you and all our guests also from St Noggins Senior College. I suppose today our previous speakers have spoken about St Patrick's Day and what a great festival and what a great celebration of our culture and our heritage and indeed our enterprise. So just to tell you, I and other colleagues were over at a showcase in Tesco, Ireland, which was in the UK for artists and food, particularly artists and food, but there was meat and other products there. And what I can say is for Tesco, Ireland, who were principally organising this in conjunction with Board Beer and I think it was a very proud moment for those of us who attended and to see that we had met ten suppliers who had been chosen to exhibit in a showcase in the UK Golden Bake, Flavahans, Ornua, Portumna Pastry, Killowen Yoghurts and Dairy Produce, Keoghan Seafood, Cool Swan, the liqueur, Silver Pale Ice Cream, Follans, we'd be familiar with in jams and of course ABP Meats. And so we and all the showcase were there to look at the food, to test the food, to see how Tesco's are promoting Irish produce and I think it's a very proud day for Ireland that the market has been expanded with the help and the assistance of Tesco. So I just want to give a shout out to Tesco and to Board Beer for opening the door from small enterprise that will now be right across the United Kingdom selling their wares on the shelves, that is some achievement. But with that comes more investment, more upskilling, more plant, in terms of money for their plants etc. So rising the market brings many many challenges. So I would like at some point we might have Minister Grealish in just to talk particularly about the Irish food sector and the potential particularly in GB. And I'd like to take this point also to single out and to thank our very excellent Irish ambassador Martin Fraser. We met him during the trip and he's a wonderful ambassador and I know he's not going to be staying much longer with us, he's going to other fields in the same services. But I want to thank him for an amazing job leader in terms of assisting us and supporting the expansion of all things cultural and enterprise, particularly in the UK market. I then would like to say to acknowledge Frank E. Feehan because many of us and other Irish people gathered in Westminster where we had the annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations there and were so warmly welcomed and so warmly received. And while we talked about the Taoiseach in America, I think you know it's unbelievable despite Brexit and everything else, the ties, the commercial ties, the connections that we have in GB and Ireland, our closest neighbours are amazing. Actually I had a sense that they were even stronger than they were two or three years ago because the economics is something, the potential of economic development between our two countries is really critically important. We have a long history in terms of our diaspora going to the UK but I think there's further growth and I really went away feeling inspired about the enterprise at Tesco's, the partnership with Tesco's and other food potential, food development. So I want to thank particularly our ambassador for the enormous work he's doing on the ground in London. Thank you. Go raibh maith agat.