I am delighted to annouce the launch of a new industry first initative called SIRA – Sustainable Irish Retail Action – an initiative designed to help Irish retailers become more sustainable. Claire Cogan and I have been working on this for several months in partnership with Retail Excellence, and with the support of Vodafone, Champion Green and Tap Creative. Our first step was to listen. We conducted a survey among Irish retailers to get their views on sustainable business practices and combined this with interviews with retailers and retail industry specialists. This has given us great insight into the ambition of Irish retailers to become more sustainable and the challenges they encounter along the way. We will follow this with among other things, a practical ‘one-stop-shop’ guide to support and resources available to retailers. Our ambition is to make it easier for retailers to embed sustainable behaviour in their businesses. We look forward to lots of activity in this space over the coming months.