Mr. Nick Ashmore:

The progress of the legislation is a matter for the Department and the Oireachtas process. ISIF, and the National Pensions Reserve Fund, NPRF, before it, operated an ESG policy and in many ways has sought to be at the forefront of the deployment of ESG as a factor in terms of how it runs its operation, how it invests the fund and to be cognisant of the responsibility we have in managing State funds.

The ESG programme involves a number of elements. We have a number of active exclusions in operation at the moment. Those include antipersonnel landmines and cluster munitions, fossil fuel companies, companies involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and then more broadly, carbon-intensive companies we seek to avoid. In each of those cases we operate a list that excludes businesses we filter out from our investments. It is part of a multitiered approach. We have a policy of active ownership and engagement and integration of ESG into all our investment decisions and we work either directly with the investment managers or the investee companies in the Irish portfolio to engage around issues that involve ESG. Often we are engaging with our companies around diversity, especially in management structures and boards.