Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I share Deputy Rice's concerns in this regard. Whereas it might not be a question on the subsidiarity aspect, it is a political statement that may warrant being made in this forum as we are the first committee to examine these proposals.

We need to write to both the enterprise committee and to the European affairs and environmental committees to ask them to take a hard look at this matter. My colleagues in the European Parliament, Lynn Boylan and Kathleen Funchion, raised very serious concerns about the omnibus proposal made by the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.

On backsliding on environmental protections, on corporate responsibility and on human rights, as well as reporting on these things, we need to be very careful as a body politic that we get this right and that we are not letting enterprises off the hook that have a responsibility on these issues. I concur with the proposal made by Deputy Rice but would add to it that we should write and flag these two proposals, namely, COM (2025) 80 and COM (2025) 81, with the European affairs committee and with the environment committee.