Ethical trading

At the heart of our values is our belief that we should treat people as we like to be treated

Our objective

Our core values are 'no-one tries harder for customers' and 'treat people how we like to be treated'. As a mass-merchandise retailer, providing unbeatable value for customers means sourcing the best value products from around the world - at the best prices. This helps families stretch their budgets further, brings more products within the reach of ordinary people, and helps to drive economic growth and our own growth.

Achieving this involves sourcing from many different countries around the world - some highly developed and some less developed, with differing standards of regulation and enforcement. Some critics argue that our presence in developing countries worsens conditions for workers because we put pressure on our suppliers to cut costs.

We believe that, in general, trading with these countries brings benefits to them and to the people who work in them - as China's extraordinary 20 years of export-led growth and poverty reduction have shown.

But treating people how we like to be treated means ensuring as best we can that our values and our standards apply wherever we source. So we require our suppliers to meet strict criteria on labour standards, and have an ethical trading policy that commits us to working hard to address and make progress on the challenges we face, both in Ireland and overseas.

The policy applies to primary suppliers of our own-brand products, as well as all loose, unlabelled produce.