Excellence Ireland is a non-profit organisation funded by its members who consist of approximately 900 corporate and 2,500 individuals. These include organisations from all business sectors, public and private.

Excellence Ireland assists businesses improve performance through systematic principles, benchmarking, best practice, and education. The performance improvements are recognized through audit, assessment and customised programmes. They conduct on an annual basis over 2,500 audits through their branded programmes such as the Q-Mark, Hygiene Mark, Business Excellence and Six Sigma since 1969. Excellence Ireland’s networks and partnerships extend internationally to encompass all best business practices, whether in Quality, Hygiene, Business Excellence, or Benchmarking.

Excellence Ireland also conducts educational and training programmes at various levels, and is the facilitator of national networks of Hygience and Business Excellence, including practitioners, local regional committees and industry leading thinking through it’s directors forum. The organisation offers a number of improvement programmes, which assist Irish companies to compete effectively at a national and international level. These programmes are the Foundation Mark, Q-Mark, Business Excellence, Six Sigma and the Hygiene Mark.

The Excellence Ireland Quality Association’s (EIQA) Hygiene Mark was launched in 1978 and is the leader in encouraging best food safety, hygiene practices and education.  It embraces the latest and emerging standards, codes and legal requirements in hygiene and food safety, both in Ireland and internationally.

Hygiene Mark - The Food Safety Programme is primarily open to all food Organisations involved in the food chain and encompasses all sectors.
The programme objectives include:

• To encourage and foster excellent hygiene and food safety standards
• Increase public awareness of hygiene and food safety through marketing and recognition in partnership with safefood
• Providing best food safety practices through our database allowing companies to benchmark within their sector or regions
• Individual Certification
• Auditing and evaluation of your current system
• Implementing and adhering to Hygiene Mark Programme criteria
• Education of staff and management members
• Continuous personnel development and training

EIQA provides training on all aspects of food safety. Examples of Hygiene training courses include:

• Essential Hygiene and Food Safety
• Essential HACCP
• Roadmap to excellence in safefood

For more information, visit the www.eiqa.ie