Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I hear the Deputy in terms of the just transition and human rights as part of the climate challenge we face. We are trying to focus on the just transition. She has seen us trying to do that in the context of peat in the midlands. We have put a just transition fund in place to make sure we can invest in and support communities that are impacted by the changes brought about by no longer using peat as a source of power generation. That has a huge impact on communities across the midlands and the Government has a responsibility to respond to that, support communities and put alternative employment opportunities in place.

If we are talking about human rights, let us talk about the human rights of the next generation. If we do not respond to the climate challenge and we will leave behind the loss of wildlife, species and echo systems, as well as much more intensive and extreme weather events. They are also human rights linked to the challenges we face from a climate perspective. There are parts of the world that are already facing these challenges head on. A just transition is really important for today's society, which has to bring about a change in how we live our lives, how we use and generate energy, how we reduce emissions and how we protect biodiversity, in addition to all the things we are trying to respond to and cope with at the moment. The alternative to us not doing that is pretty shocking in terms of what this generation of decision makers will leave behind. There could be a dramatic biodiversity loss, an undermining of our soils and, effectively, generational theft. That is what the absence of policies that take the climate challenge seriously actually means.

I understand the point the Deputy is making and it is a fair point. There are some sectors of the economy and, therefore, some people in society who are more vulnerable than others to the change we have to bring about. We have to be careful we address that and regularly address it in the Dáil and Seanad.

I was in Paris speaking at a OECD conference on business and human rights last week. I shared a session on responsible digitalisation in the context of business and human rights. We are part of the discussion on the EU directive on corporate sustainability reporting directive. We are broadly in favour of that directive, but we need to be cognisant of the administrative burdens we put upon small businesses, in particular. We must make sure that what we are proposing is actually implementable, otherwise we will end up with an enforcement headache.

We are supportive of this directive. Our Department leads on it from an Irish perspective and we are actively involved in this discussion. We would like to see it finalised and come about, but we also must ensure that what we are asking of businesses is implementable on the ground. One can sometimes design directives for the big multinationals that have a HR team and an accounting team, which can put plans in place for reporting systems that we are asking of them. It is very different when we are talking about smaller businesses. We are taking this seriously. We want to see it conclude successfully, but we must also ensure that the administrative burden we are asking of businesses is reasonable.