Ms Mary Lawlor:

I thank the committee for having us. The Trinity centre for social innovation, located in the Trinity business school, seeks to make a positive impact on society and the environment through engagement, research, innovation and teaching.

Following the adoption of the UN guiding principles on business and human Rights and Ireland's national action plan, the centre has conducted research over the past year to establish a basic understanding of where Irish companies stand on these principles and the objectives in the plan. A random sample of 22 Irish-domiciled publicly listed companies with more than 500 employees and generating more than 50% of their revenue outside Ireland were examined using their published policies and reports. The assessment was conducted using the corporate human rights benchmark. The context to this, as I said, was the guiding principles. There are 31 principles in all. They apply to all business enterprises and address the risks of adverse impacts on human rights from business activities. They centre on three pillars, namely, the state duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and access to remedy. Following publication of the plan in 2017, the Government commissioned an independent baseline assessment of Ireland's legislative and regulatory framework concerning business and human rights. There is also an EU non-financial reporting directive, under which companies are required to report on the development, performance, position and impact of their activity relating to respect for human rights, among other matters. The trouble is that companies can cause harm, either directly or by colluding with others who abuse human rights. There are few effective mechanisms at national or international level to prevent companies from violating human rights or to hold them to account. Victims affected by their operations are left powerless in the face of extreme attack. We have heard from both Ms Curran and Mr. O'Donovan in this regard.

The 22 companies we researched were from the healthcare, food products, consumer discretionary, energy, and technology, hardware and equipment sectors. These sectors are listed in my written submission. What is important is that we only examined publicly available documentation, that is, the reports and other relevant documents which the companies had produced. They were examined against the three pillars. The first was governance and policy commitments; the second, embedding respect and human rights due diligence; and the third, remedies and grievance mechanisms. The overall finding was that no company among the sample scored greater than 42% when measured under the methodology. If members look at the table titled "Results by scoring board" in my written submission, they will see that ten companies got less than 10%, which is not very impressive. We found that the results demonstrated particularly low levels of engagement with theme B, namely, embedding respect and human rights due diligence. All of us here are looking for mandatory human rights due diligence and environmental due diligence. This involves identifying and assessing the actual and potential human rights impacts of a company's operations through an ongoing process. It requires that companies integrate the findings of due diligence into their internal processes, monitor the effectiveness of measures implemented to mitigate risks, and communicate their findings and actions to interested stakeholders. We also found there was no formal addressing of access to remedy of adverse impacts and the incorporation of lessons learned in policies or reports.

We are looking for a number of things from the various political parties ahead of the next general election. First, we echo the call for Ireland to become more active in the negotiations on the proposed UN treaty on business and human rights. It is fully in line with Ireland's commitments to the UN and to its position on human rights defenders being a priority for the Irish Government, so there is nothing strange about it. Second, we are looking for mandatory human rights due diligence. We accept that this will not happen overnight, so we would like to see the State - bodies controlled by the State - lead by example in putting in place robust, mandatory due diligence. This would not require new law. I can tell the committee after my presentation how it can be done but it is an easy thing to do and would ensure that the State give a lead and would create awareness among companies of their obligations.