Ms Mary Lawlor:

The research will become a better developed programme within the business school, and teaching is going to start happening and stuff like that.

We wrote to all of the companies. We got a few responses that were not hostile but most of the companies did not respond. As the Senator said there is a huge job to be done in communicating to companies the UN guiding principles, what is human rights due diligence and why it is in their interest. We have conducted further research on the other EU directive on non-financial reporting about investing. Earlier Mr. O'Donovan talked about the issue of the IFIs. Over time where there are institutions it is in the interest of companies to get involved in human rights due diligence. It would be terrific and we would be very grateful if the committee took this on.