Ms Karen Hennessy:

I am here to represent the Institute of Directors in Ireland and have a small start-up business in the green space. I am building an extremely green, sustainable business in the midlands as part of the just transition and everything that I do looks at life cycles and across things. To give some examples of where, as an SME, the directive will have an impact on us, if I want to do business with major multiples or retailers and if they are complying with the directive, then I will have to be able to comply and be shown to comply. I have done life cycle analysis so all year round my company in the midlands grows leafy greens without soil or peat and use a limited amount of chemical pesticides. We will be an exemplar across Europe because we do not use fossil fuels to heat our glasshouse. Having looked at the life cycles, I see a possible weakness in that at the moment, the substrates that I want to grow in come from Sri Lanka. For me, that is a red flag because they have carbon miles and I cannot stand over the human rights aspect of where that item comes from. That shows the directive has an unintended consequence because now I am thinking can I get the substrates in Europe and that will have an impact for displaced people. We must be careful how the directive is rolled out and ensure that one of the unintended consequence is not taking business away from countries that need the business. Therefore, we must provide assurances and that is why I am here to show what can happen even with a very sustainable company. I am lucky that I have set up a business in this environment and I am looking across all of this but other people are not aware of this aspect. We know from our conversations with companies that their main concerns are what is the liability for companies and how do we identify that. Companies just want guidance and want to do the right thing but there is a lot of confusion and a lot of different rules and regulations, so this directive will help. The big thing for a lot of companies is guidance, support and knowledge of the likely liabilities.