Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. I thank our guests not just for attending but generally for the work they do. It is great to have an opportunity to have this discussion and shine a bit of a light on it.

I was struck by the following line in Dr. Widdis' submission: "we presume no business wants the operational, reputational or legal risk of being linked to abuses of human rights and damage to environment". It would be great if we could but the sad fact is they are willing to expose themselves to that risk. If some businesses are making an assessment of human rights versus profit, or however they work it out on the balance sheet, they are clearly taking that risk now. It would be great to be in a position to presume they do not want the damage. It is possible they do not want the publicity but they are certainly prepared to run the gauntlet of that being a possibility and that is something we need to hone in on a little. I confess I have not done significant research into it but from the small bit I did in the aftermath of the building collapse at Rana Plaza, it seemed there were wheels within wheels and a web of suppliers and small suppliers. It is not all one big corporate entity because if that were the case we could just name the top 50 companies in the world and say, "There is the list, lads, do your business right." That would be the end of it. However, clearly tens of thousands of smaller operations are possibly all part of this chain and that is my concern.

In her submission Ms Lawlor references a company that was "ultimately owned" by a parent company, if we want to call it that, in Luxembourg. Is it possible for us to come up with a way to capture the web? It is easy to identify the big brand, such as the one with the swoosh, or whatever. However it is about the smaller companies that are all part of this chain. Is it going to be possible for us to identify them? Can we cast our net wide enough? If we cannot then, maybe we are not going far. I do not want to be defeatist about it. I am looking for a wee bit of hope from the witnesses that if we get the words right, get the political will and we get this directive done properly we could be leaders on this and we could bring in that web. I am interested in the thoughts of the witnesses on that, in any order.