Ms Caoimhe de Barra:

The harms that are the most egregious often happen at the beginning of the value chain, for example, in extractive industries where the raw minerals are being extracted and before they are passed on to more formalised business processes. We work in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, which is unfortunately notorious for the kinds of abuse that happen in a wide range of extractive industries.

As Ms Tunney stated, the language is unclear. Something we are concerned about is that, by including language around established business relationships, it allows companies to hold themselves to account for their relationships with formalised contracted suppliers only. Where we work, the suppliers are often informally contracted. There are contracts of forms, but they are informal. In the Rana Plaza example, the supply chain was very dispersed. The protections that one would normally expect to be there for people in different types of employment are not there. We are concerned that naming only established building relationships could drive companies that are operating without a strong ethics dimension towards more work on an informal basis and away from the compliance requirement of having to report and do due diligence because they have formal supply relationships. The risk is that it would incentivise negative behaviour and increase the supply chain quotient of informal business suppliers. I hope I have explained what I mean.