Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 March 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Challenges Facing Small and Medium Enterprises: Discussion

Mr. Simon McKeever:

On disability, as an organisation with reach throughout the country, we absolutely stand ready to help in any way we can and to support any initiative brought forward, including in the context of assisting with finding jobs for refugees. We were very vocal about that last year when the invasion of Ukraine began.

To come back to the CSRD, I want to labour the point because I think we need to get moving on this. This is Brexit all over again. From a small business point of view - and, in fact, from everybody's point of view, we not only have the CSRD coming down, but there is the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, which is all about human rights. As the exporting association, what is important for us is that when people talk about sustainability, they think it is all about going green and climate change, but it is not. There are 17 sustainable development goals, each of which needs to be looked at. The human rights aspect is very important in the context of all of our supply chains. A reporting requirement in that regard will be forthcoming in 2028. There is now EU taxonomy, which is backing everything up and sitting underneath the CSRD, and it will be virtually in place in the next few months. Even the biggest companies in the world are not fully across this, so I labour the point deliberately. What is proposed is massive. If you talk to any of the large law firms and consulting houses, they will indicate the amount of work and expense that are going to be involved in getting companies ready to be able to report on this. It is huge.