Notion of an Irish conspiracy is ‘bizarre’

Ireland’s food safety watchdog wrote to the British parliamentary committee to complain about possible breaches of data protection and the committee’s “bizarre” notion of a conspiracy on the part of Irish authorities.

Alan O’Reilly, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, spoke before Britain’s House of Commons environment, food, and rural affairs committee in April and faced a barrage of questions, including accusations that the FSAI could have told its UK counterpart, the Food Standards Agency, at an earlier stage about the results of its testing programme at the end of 2012.

The fractious tone of the exchanges in the committee hearing prompted the FSAI to lodge a submission with it shortly afterwards, rebutting individual points raised by committee members.