Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)

I apologise for being late. I was in the Chamber. I thank the organisations for their reports on this. The protection of workers' rights is an important issue, as is the protection of people and the environment across the world. The European Union has a critical part to play in all of this. We certainly agree with the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights on all the points it made. We will support it on that. Even the original proposal was still not strong enough on the protection of rights.

I will raise a couple of issues, which I will link to a number of debates we just had on human rights and Israeli war bonds. How we can implement our legislation, our laws and our belief in basic human rights is made difficult because of European Union legislation. Obviously, there are different discussions on whether we can implement restrictions on the Central Bank issuing those war bonds, but it just goes to show how important European law is in this regard. A genocide is going on in Israel, yet those war bonds are being sold on the international markets. The only reason those bonds are in Ireland is Britain left the European Union. Otherwise, they would still be there. How could that type of legislation impact on the new CSDDD? Would it have an impact?

The other interesting issue, and I watched a couple of programmes on this, concerns the dumping of end-of-use products across the world. I note in the submission that it goes upstream and not downstream. That is important. We are mass-producing lots of things across the European Union and products are being sold into the European Union. Where do these go once they reach the end of their lives? They mostly go to developing countries where the restrictions are much less than they are in the European Union. That is a critical part of it. How can we ensure those developing countries and the people within them are protected?

We talk about labour laws. We have quite strict laws on how people are treated, but we know that is not the case across the world and people are treated abhorrently. I find it strange that we are talking about human rights, workers' rights, people's lives and the environment, yet we are also talking about profits. Ultimately, what this is about is profits. I have no issue with businesses making profits - that is what their job is - but I find it strange that people will kick back on something like this and use human rights, the climate and all the other arguments just on the basis that this will be highly restrictive for them as regards profits. When we strip it away, that is ultimately what it is about.

On the civil liability rules, we talk about collaboratively working with the European Union to create a better environment for people, business, the environment and all of that, but countries may be allowed to pick and choose whether they implement this. For example, if we say we want the best and we want to implement the best type of legislation that protects people but another country within the European Union says it will not do that, it then puts Irish businesses and jobs at risk. I am asking about the collectiveness of that. If we are in the European Union, there should not be any get-out clause because it just puts those countries that want to do the best at risk.