Ms Caoimhe de Barra:

I thank Deputy Flaherty very much. One point I would like to make is that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Irish Aid are heavily engaged in contexts where human rights violations occur. They engage diplomatically through the European Parliament and local civil society in the context of addressing the multiple causes of violations of human rights. This is not a body of work that we would see in any way in isolation from the rest of the Government's approach to the promotion, protection and defence of human rights internationally.

The point Deputy Flaherty is making is that this is certainly not a panacea. We would agree. However, from our work in Central America, for example, where there is a combination of governance, politics and criminality, effectively, what they have is an enabling environment for corporate violations of human rights. The Department of Foreign Affairs, through agencies such as Trócaire and by means of its own engagement bilaterally with, for example, counterpart ministries for foreign affairs, engages on this holistically.

What we are seeing and hearing today is that we need to see a cohesive response from the Government towards human rights violations within the corporate sector, and that the Government should equally represent the values of the Irish people in this dialogue around the corporate due diligence directive as much as it does, for example, through its work on the UN Security Council on similar issues and violations.