Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I have one question for each delegation starting with the institute. We will have heard from the negotiations that the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, protected or attempted to protect many aspects of this law from being watered down, which is the opposite to the role that we played in the run up to this. I commend the Minister of State on that even though his efforts were somewhat in vain.

A recent report from the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights, Don't Buy into Occupation: Exposing the financial flows into illegal Israeli settlements, found that between January 2019 and August 2022, 725 European financial institutions, including banks, asset managers, insurance companies and pension funds, had financial relationships with 50 businesses that are actively involved in Israeli settlements. I ask the Institute of Directors in Ireland why many businesses support the directive when financial institutions have lobbied heavily against it. What is the possible damage their partial exclusion will do to the environmental, social and governance, ESG, goals?