252. Deputy Sinéad Gibney asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment to elaborate on his position that alcohol labelling would impact competitiveness; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33469/25]

Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment: Ireland remains a competitive country and this year, we have been ranked as the seventh most competitive country internationally. The importance of our competitiveness - as a small open economy - has been underscored by recent global economic uncertainty. Notwithstanding the aforementioned rankings, we cannot afford to be complacent and the Government is clear that there are areas where we can improve and that we should not take any steps would erode the relative competitiveness of Ireland's enterprise base. Specifically, in order to navigate these uncertain times, it makes sense to focus on those factors which fall within our domestic sphere of control.

To this end, I recently wrote to my Government colleague - the Minister for Health - in relation to the proposed changes to alcohol beverage labelling due to come into effect from 2026. Specifically, I expressed my concern that the proposed measures would mean increased production and sale costs for Irish producers and importers (and potentially add to the price payable by consumers) at a time when prices are also rising due to a multitude of other factors.

At the same time, our domestic production sector is going through a period of very significant disruption to supply chains and access to markets. Notwithstanding the overarching health benefits of the proposal, I requested my colleague to consider pausing the introduction of the proposed new requirements. Such a move would, in my view, provide the opportunity to work with the Commission on progressing a harmonised set of EU-wide regulations and would also reinforce our approach of seeking to reduce regulatory fragmentation in the Internal Market and of working constructively with other like-minded countries on trade matters.