Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Challenges Facing Businesses in Relation to Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility: Discussion

Ms Bernadette Phelan:

In terms of the Senator's opening point, I think this agenda is personal. It is about the house you live in. It is how you travel. It is the food you eat. How we approach it is very much about hearts and minds. I have had the honour of people seeing senior leaders having their "A-ha" moment, and the realisation that how they have worked to date is not how they want to carry on in the future. We do things like the business working responsibly mark, which is the analytical head part of it. Our education and employment programmes for the past 20 years have been showing those change and impact stories and giving people the stories that show how lives can be changed through working together and different collaborations. Within sustainability I go back to that comment about communications around sustainability. Even the word is complex and we have not done ourselves any favours. That is an open piece. We need to change how we communicate and engage, and recognise that this is a behavioural and personal issue that people need to get involved in.