Dr. Chris O'Connell:

To come back to why Trócaire and other members of the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights are focusing on the treaty, it is because, as Senator Stephenson said, we are there with our partners in the communities. These are the people with whom we work day in, day out, and they are the ones who are experiencing this in their daily lives, as has been mentioned here. It is very easy at times with some of these corporate value chains to see these problems as being very distant but here we have two people in the same room who are telling the committee this is what their lives are like and about the persecution they are experiencing. This is something we have the privilege of having access to far more often and so we hope members of this committee and the Irish Government would share that care for them and the impacts they are suffering.