Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is hair-raising to have another Sorcha present; it has made me jump slightly on several occasions. I thank all of our guests for their very detailed explanations and opinions on what is happening in the world. I get very perplexed and somewhat confused because we often hear the repeated refrain of how we are now a global economy and that we need to think about work, business and customers in a global manner and almost remove the parish pump element from our businesses. What we do not see, and what we certainly do not hear about, is the global nature of responsibility and the global nature of regulations that need to be put in place. Mr. Walsh spoke about ten years of voluntary guidelines. I find it difficult to comprehend why anybody would have thought some companies would voluntarily sign up to these guidelines and would voluntarily take on the additional cost and the change in their outlook that would respect human rights and remove the environmental harm they have been doing. Let us be honest. It is not something that some corporations are open to or with which their business model is automatically compatible.

Ireland's long-standing reputation on overseas aid and its progression as a people who want to see a greater level of human rights has been delivered over generations. It strikes me that there is a hue of hypocrisy when we pat ourselves on the back regarding the amount of work we engage in while not holding companies that are Irish, or that may be semi-State bodies or that may be some of the biggest companies in the world operating here, to a standard which means that they can no longer act with token impunity in another place. In the run-up to this meeting I was looking at the social media presence of some global and Irish companies and the lovely fluffy glassy brochures they put out there. What they do not mention, and what they are very slow to acknowledge, is the impunity with which they operate in some lower income countries or developing countries. We need to take Ireland's reputation as a protector of human rights and overseas development aid into another area whereby we see the same regard for demanding a higher level and holding corporations to it than how they operate in some countries at present. This comes back to corporate accountability legislation.

The national action plan on business and human rights was published in 2017. The Government received a recently conducted review of this. Have the witnesses had engagement with Departments on this? With regard to the proposed treaty, what is the most resistance the witnesses meet to it as a concept?

I do not mean to be facetious when I ask my next question. What are the immediate steps the witnesses believe need to be taken with regard to how indigenous women are being failed?

I am going to call it out for what it is, because their needs and their rights are almost being sacrificed and are definitely secondary to corporate profits. Again, what does the coalition see as the immediate steps that need to be taken now? What would the long and medium-term benefits be of those steps being taken?