Ms Evie Clarke:

I thank the Chair and the committee for inviting the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights to this important session. The coalition is a network of civil society organisations, trade unions and academic experts working in the area of business and human rights to bring about policy change to ensure that human rights and environmental abuses are prevented from happening in the first place and are properly addressed and remedied when they do occur. The coalition is made up of more than 20 members, including Oxfam Ireland, Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid Ireland, Trócaire, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Trinity College law school and the UCD centre for ethics and sustainability. It is a broad group of organisations covering wide-ranging issues from diverse perspectives, each of which sees the profound and urgent need to ensure that Ireland and the EU do not continue to turn a blind eye on what is happening in the supply chains of large multinational companies.

Considering the recent backlash against protections for workers and the environment, it is important that we remind ourselves where the realisation of the need for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation came from. On 24 April 2013, more than 1,130 workers needlessly lost their lives when the eight-storey Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed on the workers sewing clothes for European brands. The building was constructed in 2006 on the site of an old pond. There as a failure to obtain the proper permits prior to it being built. The top three floors were added to the building without supporting walls. The garment factories inside used heavy machinery that the building could not safely accommodate. The day before the fatal disaster, large cracks were discovered in the building, leading the shop and bank on the lower floors to close immediately. However, the garment factory owners on the upper floors ignored the danger. At 9 a.m the following day, the building collapsed, trapping thousands of people inside.

For over 15 years, Ireland has sourced coal for Moneypoint power station from Cerrejón, which is one of the world’s most controversial mines. This Colombian operation has been linked to: brutal human rights abuses; entire indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities forcibly displaced; rivers diverted and poisoned; children sickened by coal dust; and local leaders being threatened for speaking out. While Ireland burned coal from this mine, communities at the source paid the price with their health, homes and lives.

These are not isolated tragedies; they are part of a global pattern of corporate impunity. There are countless other examples. From these entirely avoidable tragedies sprung global momentum to legally require companies to address human rights and environmental risks and the impacts associated with them. The European Commission recognised the need to introduce mandatory standards for companies to assess, prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses and environmental harm through leading EU law - the corporate sustainability due diligence directive. This is not something that came out of nowhere. This is a process that built slowly over decades, beginning with voluntary initiatives including the UN's Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises. The voluntary nature of these standards, though, could not possibly come close to the legal structure and certainty needed to prevent tragedies such as those to which I refer from happening.

The directive is a product of preventable tragedies like Rana Plaza and the obvious need for corporate accountability. It is also required to meet our climate commitments and human rights obligations, and was a product of painstaking negotiations on the part of trade unions, international organisations, the previous Irish Government and EU institutions, including our MEPs.

Just before the CSDDD officially became law by being approved by the European Commission, the Council, including the Irish Government, and the European Parliament, the then Minister of State responsible for the directive, Dara Calleary, laid out the Government's position and support of the issue when he stated:

Ireland has consistently been supportive of the objectives of the proposed Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence ... I have been seeking to ensure that the proposal has ambition while striking the right balance of providing effective protections for stakeholders and ensuring that the measures to be implemented by companies are clear, proportionate, and enforceable.

In only a few short months, we have seen the European Commission and right-wing governments attempt to dismantle the progress that has been made over decades. The omnibus proposal presented on 26 February proposes tearing apart all of the provisions of the directive that would bring about actual change. The proposal was introduced under the guise of simplification to amend the corporate sustainability reporting directive, the due diligence directive and the green taxonomy but was, in fact, a proposal to deregulate key protections and directly undermine corporate accountability with respect to human rights.

As committee members will have seen, and they have in their pack, more than 90 leading European economists, including Irish economists, called for a swift and ambitious implementation of the directive and for member states to oppose the omnibus proposal. They stated that the directive is a crucial and effective step towards an economy that respects human rights, the environment and the climate. The also identify the positive economic effects expected alongside the enforcement of human rights and environmental standards in Europe and the global south.

The omnibus proposal is categorically not simplification. Ensuring that workers are not exploited or killed, that communities are not taken out by entirely preventable tragedies and that natural environments and waterways are not contaminated beyond repair is not an unnecessary burden. It is not red tape or bureaucracy. It is vital that this committee and the Irish Government names this for what it is. Without acknowledging these realities fully and the need to address them by defending and strengthening important legislation, we will continue to see similar tragedies taking place, and it will be very clear which Governments decidedly played a part in this continued suffering.