Mr. Colm O'Neill:

Mr. Forde has explained that the due diligence process will stop at tier one unless the company has plausible information to suggest the possibility or existence of adverse impacts for the due diligence. If there is no possibility or evidence of adverse effects further down, then the due diligence will stop at tier 1. This could relieve the trickle-down effect on SMEs.

The directive as published provides that companies have to evaluate the adequacy and implementation of their due diligence processes. At present in the directive it is down to one year and the proposal is to increase it to five years. If this proposal were accepted - it is still under discussion at present - it would limit the burden on SMEs, which often have to provide data to feed into the reports that large companies have to make.