Mr. Conor O'Neill:

Like Ms Tunney, I sincerely thank you, Chairman, the officials and the members for facilitating this online meeting in difficult circumstances and particularly for making sure that Ms Mateus Parra from CAJAR was able to make a presentation. It is a very important principle for our coalition that everything we do is directly influenced by what is happening in communities and the partners with whom we work. We are very appreciative of that.

We also recognise the constructive criticism or the more challenging questions. We will make ourselves available to the committee members to follow up after the meeting with more material on those. We have a wealth of research that we can share. The coalition has recognised that Ireland, rightly, has been seen as a leader in human rights in many different areas and the impacted communities in the different countries we work in around the world look to Ireland for leadership on human rights issues. The corporate impact is one of the areas where we have made less progress. When we look around the European Union and see countries such as France and the Netherlands taking those steps now, doing the research and getting the processes in place, that is what is helping the EU directive emerge. That is what will push the ambition of the EU directive higher. The offer of this committee to write to the relevant Departments and to work with sister committees under different Departments to try to ensure Ireland is in that pack of leaders is very well received and I thank the committee for that.