Mr. Garry Walsh:

Our coalition is of the view that the key to addressing the issue of corporate harm to the environment and human rights is to move beyond voluntary commitments and towards legally binding regulation. This would be the most effective way to systematically address these issues, such as in the cases that we have heard about in Colombia, Palestine and other areas. Ten years ago, the UN agreed a set of key guiding principles on business and human rights.

The guiding principles provide a framework for how states and businesses should meet their obligations and responsibilities to respect and protect human rights and to provide for remedy when abuses still occur. They suggest a "smart mix" of measures, including both voluntary and mandatory approaches. These include introducing systematic due diligence checks, whereby companies must identify, prevent, mitigate and, ultimately, account for how they address human rights issues throughout their supply chains and operations.

However, despite these guidelines from the UN, due diligence over the past decade has largely been encouraged, through voluntary guidance, rather than made mandatory through binding legislation. Fundamentally, asking corporations to effectively police themselves has failed to systematically prevent these abuses from happening.

Ireland’s approach has also largely relied predominantly on voluntary measures, rather than progressing binding legislation. Our national plan on business and human rights has focused on voluntary guidelines and there is little evidence that this model of encouragement to Irish companies has had a significant impact. Recent research from Trinity College Dublin has shown that of the top 60 companies in Ireland, as well as Ireland’s ten largest State-owned enterprises, 34% scored zero on embedding respect for human rights in their operations.

Furthermore, at UN level, Ireland and the EU have failed to support the development of a legally binding treaty on business and human rights. Negotiations for a treaty to regulate the activities of transnational corporations have been ongoing for the seven years. We are extremely disappointed with the EU’s lack of meaningful engagement to progress this treaty, as well as Ireland’s lack of pro-active support in favour of a UN treaty.

Ireland’s approach to this issue of corporate accountability, business and human rights, which relies predominantly on a voluntary measures, is out of step with developments throughout Europe in recent years. There is a clear shift now towards firmer binding legal requirements. France, Germany and Norway have all introduced legislation for mandatory human rights due diligence across supply chains. The European Commission is developing an EU-wide legislative proposal which was due this year. It has been delayed, but we hope it will be announced early next year. Just in the past few days, the Dutch foreign minister has indicated the Netherlands will introduce mandatory human rights due diligence.

We would like to see Ireland using its influence at the EU to push for a strong and robust EU due diligence directive and for the EU to secure a mandate to negotiate a UN treaty. In October 2022, during the negotiations in Geneva, we want to see the EU push for a strong treaty and want Ireland to push in order that the EU turns up at the eighth session with a mandate to negotiate.

These international frameworks are important, but the priority should be to introduce national level legislation. The EU directive would ultimately mandate Ireland to introduce such legislation and this should be the priority. Ireland should develop strong legislation and the groundwork should begin now. We encourage this committee to strongly support the initiation of Irish legislation and our coalition has set out our proposals for how such legislation could look in our recent Make it Your Business report. We have set out key elements of how such legislation would look, underpinned by the work of Dr. Rachel Widdis from Trinity College, who is one of the leading experts in Ireland in this area.

Such legislation would make it mandatory for companies to undertake human rights and environmental due diligence.

This would be a legal duty. It would cover all Irish businesses and all human rights and international environmental standards. It would also introduce legal liability for companies throughout their global supply chains. If we see an Irish company cause or contribute to damage, they could be liable, so affected communities would be able to take cases against Irish companies for damages, compensation or remedy through the Irish courts. We would also advocate that it should include meaningful and safe engagement with affected communities at all stages in the process and it should address reprisals against communities which choose to speak out to defend human rights.

Given the work of initiating and developing such legislation would cut across the responsibilities of a number of Government Departments, we respectfully request that the Chair of the committee write to the Minister for Foreign Affairs but also to the Minister for Justice and the Tánaiste, as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, to recommend that they progress strong corporate accountability legislation in Ireland and work together across Departments to progress legislation along the lines of the proposals we are setting out in our report.

To conclude, as we recover from the pandemic, ultimately, we need to change our approach. We need to insist on legally binding regulation. We need to see an end to land grabs, rivers been poisoned, forests being cut down, garment workers producing our clothes in situations akin to modern slavery and toxic oil spills ruining the environment. We need to end corporate abuses of human rights and the environment. Frankly, we need to do our best to end the involvement of Irish companies in the situations we have heard about from Ms Mateus Parra in her powerful testimony today. We have to protect the land defenders, environmental defenders and indigenous defenders because they are already protecting all of us.