Ms Mary Lawlor:

I echo what Ms Curran and Mr. O'Donovan said, because we have seen over the years the appalling attacks and killings of human rights defenders. It is true that Ireland has the priority of civil society space in the resolution at the United Nations. The stars align for Ireland to be doing more on the United Nations treaty, and when it comes to business in Ireland. It is not all out there. I was in the Sperrins yesterday. There is a Canadian gold mining company there, which has a prospector licence at the moment. There has been no environmental protection assessment and no planning permission as yet, but there are already signs of significant intimidation by people, although we do not know by whom, including a death against someone. The Sperrins are near Omagh. If one looks at the case of San Leon, there is a complaint by the Global Legal Action Network, GLAN, to the OECD contact person regarding its activities in Western Sahara. It is not all about what is happening out there, because we know in our human rights work the local, the international and the regional all come together, and it is economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.

For us, it is important there is more than a declaration and a commitment by Ireland to human rights and environmental due diligence, first of all by the State in all its activities with whatever companies - semi-State companies and the other companies with which it does business - because that is something that can be done now without any legislation. The next thing, as Ms Curran said, is legislation. The role of this committee is to push for that as well. We all know how politics works. If it is not something that is really important to the day-to-day business and is a bit removed, it does not get attention. It does not mean that people are bad. It just means that it is not a priority, and the only way to make it a priority is to have mandatory human rights and environmental legislation. It will not happen by itself, and companies, as was rightly pointed out, have no appetite for it for many reasons. Part of it is that they just do not know.

One of the things I think should happen next is for an organisation like the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which does training with governments and companies, to do some training on how to put in place mandatory human rights due diligence, on what is necessary and on what it involves. Until it happens, we could be here in three years saying the same stuff.