The Good Food Ireland conference 2025 drew 300 delegates to the Anantara Marker Hotel in Dublin to hear industry updates from key figures such as Alice Mansergh, JP McMahon, John Gilliland and Darina Allen.
The Good Food Island experience was launched at the event by Minister Martin Heyden, who addressed the conference after an action-packed day in the Dáil. He opened his speech by saying it was good to be in a room where people behaved like adults
Five takeaways from the Good Food Ireland conference yesterday at the Anantara Hotel in Dublin.
- Visitors to Ireland profess to know nothing or have a low regard for Irish food before they come, but are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about it when they leave.
- Small food producers are growing. In the 1990s there were 60, now there are 600.
- Fishmongers are under pressure. There are just 60 left in the country and at the end of the decade, predicted they would be half that.
- Chefs are reluctant to put lesser known varieties of fish on the menu, the only species of fish completely indigenous to Ireland, the pollan, is more widely eaten in Switzerland than in Ireland. The megrim (labeled “Connemara sole” in Jp McMahon’s restaurant), is widely available, easy, but unfamiliar.
- The damage done by changing production away from high protein meat diet can be greater than the environmental benefits, according to an important stud from Aberdeen University. When you quantify the hidden cost of the global agrifood system, the social cost is $571bn, the environmental cost $2,868bn and the health cost $9,310bn.
- Ireland is one of the few countries with an indigenous bee species, they LOVE whitethorn and they are confused by the wildflower seeds being widely sold in supermarkets.
The speakers:
- Darina Allen, Ballymaloe Cookery School, Co Cork
- Martin Buckley, Chef Owner, The LifeBoat Inn Courtmacsherry, Co Cork
- Eoghan Corry, editor of Travel Extra
- Paul Cunningham, Chef Owner, Scoper’s Hot Food Bar Dundrum, Co Down
- Diarmuid Donnellan, Head of Sustainability for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, AIB
- Una Fitzgibbon, Director of Marketing, Bord Bia
- John Gilliland environmental researcher and farmer from Derry
- Morgan Ging, Founder, Ballykeefe Distillery, Kilkenny
- Francie Gorman, President, Irish Farmers’ Association
- Michael Kelly, CEO & Founder, GIY, Author and TV Presenter
- Kevin Kenny, General Manager, Castle Leslie Estate, Co Monaghan
- Noel Leahy, Leahy Beekeeping, Co Galway
- John Lynch, CEO Irish South & East Fish Producer Organisation (ISEFPO)
- Nicholas Lynch, Owner Nick’s Fish, Co Meath
- Alice Mansergh, CEO Tourism Ireland
- JP McMahon, Chef & Owner, Aniar 2.0, Galway
- Gareth Mullins, Executive Chef Anantara The Marker Hotel Dublin
- Crothúr Murphy, Owner, Crafted Ireland, Luxury DMC, Dublin
- Tom Murray, Agronomist O’Shea Farms, Co Kilkenny
- Gary O’ Hanlon, Executive Chef, The K Club
- Paul Ward, BIM
- Peter Ward, Owner, Country Choice Nenagh, Co Tipperary
