Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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We are joined by Ms Evie Clarke, policy co-ordinator for the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights; Ms Deirdre Duffy, CEO of Friends of the Earth; and Dr. Johnny Ryan, director of enforce at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. They are all very welcome.

The purpose of today's meeting is to continue our discussions on EU Presidency planning and current issues on EU competitiveness and the EU business and human rights agenda. Competitiveness is a core feature of the current EU agenda, which follows on from the publication of the competitiveness compass last year. Among the initiatives proposed are the simplification of EU rules through the omnibus proposals which we will discuss as part of today's discussion. The committee, in particular, wishes to hear the views of our witnesses on planning for the EU Presidency, and issues that should be considered at EU level in the second half of this year.

Before we proceed, I must read out a note on privilege and some housekeeping matters. Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity either by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. I remind members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, any member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard I ask any member partaking via Teams that prior to making their contribution to the meeting they confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus.

We will now move to the opening statements. Ms Clarke and her colleagues will have five minutes to make their opening statement, after which we will open the floor to members.

Ms Evie Clarke:

I thank the Chair. The Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights, ICBHR, is a network of civil society organisations, trade unions and academic experts working on advancing respect for human rights and environmental standards in business. The ICBHR brings together more than 20 member organisations, including the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, Oxfam Ireland, Christian Aid Ireland, Trócaire, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, Friends of the Earth Ireland and academics from Trinity College law school and the UCD centre for ethics and sustainability.

The ICBHR's work is grounded in the promotion of corporate responsibility and accountability. We advocate for robust legal and policy frameworks that prevent harm linked to business and ensure access to effective remedy where harm occurs. Our collective expertise spans labour rights, environmental protection, development, and legal accountability, both within the EU and globally.

We are here today to discuss the policy priorities for Ireland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union, including current issues around EU competitiveness. This must be understood in the context of an increasing prioritisation of competitiveness over fundamental rights for people and the planet, and the use of this framing to justify rapid deregulation in order to satisfy the demands of powerful corporate interests. This is being achieved through a series of so-called 'omnibus' policy proposals – legislative initiatives which open up and amend a number of EU laws at once – set within a broader shift in EU policymaking characterised by strengthened corporate consultation channels, reduced civil society participation, and a growing emphasis on competitiveness over rights protections.

While the first omnibus has been adopted, and has weakened safeguards for workers and communities under the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDDD, the EU's flagship law on corporate human rights and environmental due diligence, it is only one of a much broader set of deregulatory packages. In 2025, the European Commission put forward ten omnibus proposals, spanning areas including the environment, digital, chemicals, and food and feed, with many more expected to be negotiated or adopted in 2026.

It is difficult to overstate the depth and breadth of this deregulatory drive, which will be one of the key issues Ireland will need to grapple with during its Presidency. I will speak briefly about omnibus I and what it tells us about the current direction of EU policymaking, before my colleagues explore deregulation in related areas, particularly digital and environmental protection.

Considering the backlash against protections for workers, communities and the environment, it is important to recall what is at stake and why mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation was introduced in the first place. On 24 April 2013, over 1,130 workers needlessly lost their lives when the eight-storey Rana Plaza commercial building collapsed on the workers sewing clothes for large European fashion brands. The building was constructed in 2006 on the site of an old pond and failed to obtain the proper permits prior to being built. The top three floors were added onto the building without supporting walls. The garment factories inside used heavy machinery that the building could not safely hold. The day before the fatal disaster, large cracks were discovered in the building leading the shop and bank on the lower floors to immediately close. However, the garment factory owners on the upper floors ignored the danger. At 9 o'clock the following morning, the building collapsed, trapping thousands of people inside, and the loss of life was devastating.

The Rana Plaza collapse, and similar instances of corporate harm, triggered widespread outrage and sustained calls for accountability, led by affected communities and human rights defenders in the global south. It also led to intense pressure on governments to regulate large, powerful companies that flout human rights and environmental standards in their supply chains, pressure that was notably supported by many companies themselves. New standards were agreed at the UN and OECD levels, and legislation was passed in a number of EU countries. Eventually, after years of detailed negotiations, a landmark new EU law, the CSDDD, was agreed, to oblige the largest and most powerful companies to take action.

The CSDDD was intended to be a standard-setting legislation that would ensure that powerful companies have a binding legal responsibility to prevent, address, and remedy human rights and environmental risks in their supply chains. It was supposed to be an important step towards ending entirely preventable tragedies like Rana Plaza. However, it has since become a test case for deregulation and the influence of powerful corporate lobbying. The first omnibus, presented by the European Commission on 26 February 2025 and passed with such breakneck speed that it breached the EU's own policymaking guidelines, prompted the EU Ombudswoman to conclude that the process amounted to "maladministration", effectively gutted the CSDDD of its substance. It narrowed the scope to far fewer companies, weakened stakeholder engagement and monitoring, removed climate transition plan requirements, and created serious barriers to enforcement and access to justice for affected communities. This now stands as a blueprint for further deregulation across the policy areas my colleagues will discuss, and beyond.

EU leaders are calling this a "simplification revolution", but this is not simplification.

It amounts to deregulation and, at times, even added complexity pursued without proper regard for workers, communities or affected groups or climate or environmental impacts. During its Presidency of the Council of the EU, the Government has a responsibility to facilitate the protection of fundamental rights and EU values across policymaking, including the rights of workers, communities and the environment and climate in the context of ongoing debates on deregulation. Ensuring that workers are not exploited, that digital rights are protected, that communities are not devastated by preventable tragedies and that natural environments and waterways are not contaminated beyond repair is not an unnecessary burden. These are essential protections. It is vital that the committee and the Government ensure that fundamental rights are placed at the centre of EU policymaking ahead of narrow corporate interests.

Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Before I turn to Dr. Ryan, I have to bring to the attention of members that we allowed for five minutes for all of the opening statements together. If members had sight of the opening statements and wished to make a comment or ask a question now we will do so, but I suggest that we listen to all of the opening statements together and then open the floor. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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That is important not just for ourselves but people who are listening and watching at home. There is huge interest in this issue. It is important that we listen.

Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I agree. We will understand this better having listened to all three statements.

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members. I have held several senior roles in industry and can tell the committee from my experience in some of the most innovative companies in Europe and elsewhere that Europe has many competitiveness problems, but its data regulation and digital rulebook, if enforced, is not one of those problems. There is no data regulation where big tech is concerned. It does not exist. It is written in our law but there has never been any real active regulation. It is ten years since GDPR was enacted. Last month, the chair of the Data Protection Commission told the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence, in answer to a question, that the commission has yet to complete a single inquiry into Google. GDPR law has been in place for ten years, yet not a single inquiry has been completed.

We have responsibility legally for the entire European area to supervise the things that every parent is worried about, namely Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Whatever you are worried about online, it is almost certainly an Irish watchdog that is responsible for supervising it and almost certainly it is not doing so. We do not have regulations because, in effect, when we in Ireland do not act the rest of Europe also cannot act because of the way the rules have been set.

I will give the committee examples of why this matters so much. The first example is the social media algorithms that keep pushing self-loathing and suicidal content into children's feeds all across Europe. They can only do so because the Data Protection Commission has not enforced Articles 8 and 9 of GDPR which have been law not just for ten years, but since the 1995 data protection directive. When the Data Protection Commissioner does not enforce, those algorithms that are poisoning the minds of children in Europe and that, for example, drove 14-year-old British girl Molly Russell to take her own life, those algorithms are allowed to keep operating. They should not be allowed by the law, which we are obliged to enforce and they could only be switched on if Molly's guardian had elected to do so, having been sufficiently warned.

On the competitiveness side, one important reason the European AI industry cannot scale is that our enforcer has not enforced something called the purpose limitation principle under GDPR. This refers to Article 5(1)(b). It states that you cannot take data that you have for one particular reason in one bit of your business over here and automatically put it into AI training in another location. When a company has won a market over here, that does not guarantee it supremacy forever in AI. Clearly, it is and has been common sense since the 1970s that that should not be so, but our enforcer has not enforced that regulation.

There are many other examples of the dire consequences of our regulatory sabotage because that it what it is. The committee may remember the New York Times bestseller, Careless People, by the Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams. In that book she described our enforcer as a lapdog. That is what industry calls it. That should echo in the minds of the committee from the banking inquiry. There is something eerily similar between the current cosiness our watchdog has with these companies and the cosiness that our watchdog had with the banks. The same scale of problem will result.

Members will remember the large fines we have heard about. The largest was €1.2 billion, which sounds large to everyone in the room, but I assure members that we live in a different world from the companies subject to those fines. The fine was imposed by the Irish enforcer only after a majority vote of all of its peers that forced it to do so. Paragraph 38 of the European Data Protection Board decision forcing Ireland to file that fine notes that the Data Protection Commissioner said there should be no fine and in part of the decision stated that there was no illegality.

Let me conclude with a recommendation. We have witnessed a dire and dangerous gulf emerge between what the State thinks is its short-term selfish interest and what Europe needs. Unless we see some very revolutionary change in the coming weeks, Ireland should recuse itself from every digital issue in its forthcoming presidency of the European Council. We cannot trust ourselves to do anything else.

Ms Deirdre Duffy:

I thank the Chair and committee members for the invitation to Friends of the Earth to make a presentation. Many will know us. We campaign for a healthy and pollution-free world and for a fair and fast transition away from fossil fuels. In our 50-year existence - today is our 52nd birthday - we have consistently called for Ireland to shift its energy system away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible and to avoid locking in more fossil fuels like the proposed LNG terminal for future generations into fossil fuel dependence.

Committee members will know that according to the UN and climate experts we have lost the battle on 1.50. We are in a battle for our lives at this stage. Every second, action and EU presidency counts. We have witnessed events in Ireland over the past while which point to the impact of our changing weather, including Storm Chandra. If the events of the past few weeks have taught us anything, it is that we need to radically and concretely break Ireland's dependence on imported fossil fuels.

There is no doubt that the Presidency is a huge and expensive task for our State's system. However, any legislative policy or political influence we have must strengthen the phasing out of fossil fuels in Ireland and within the bloc. If keeping fossil fuels in the ground is the immediate and long-term goal, and we know the signs and all of the experts tell us it must be so, we must be clear-eyed about the policy approach that Ms Clarke has outlined, which involves the European Commission driving forth deregulation, supported by a right-leaning EU Parliament. At EU level we are currently witnessing not routine adjustment, but rather a concentrated effort which is significant and co-ordinated and involves a drift towards deregulation that risks undermining our already hard fought and hard won climate and environmental protections.

Right now, as the committee heard from Ms Clarke, the European Commission is moving towards deregulation which will weaken existing laws and corporate accountability. It is important for committee members to note that it will also limit the possibility for member states to go further than EU laws.

Weakening standards does not make Europe more competitive. In fact, we believe reducing regulation would have two impacts that are quite substantial. With regard to taxation, if the corporate lobby groups succeed in reducing taxation, this could leave the State weaker and result in less money for investment in infrastructure, education and ultimately innovation, which drives competition. The second impact, which is really important, is that on public trust. Weakening regulation undermines public trust, which is the bedrock of our national social fabric and a fundamental component of EU citizenship. I urge committee members to protect that during our EU Presidency. We know what happens in other countries, and we know it is emerging here, when a lack of trust is stoked and corporate interests are elevated above all else, including the needs of citizens.

Ms Clarke has covered some parts of my statement so I will move on and join with Dr. Ryan in mentioning the previous financial crash. When has the carrot-only approach worked for corporate interests, which are ultimately driven by shareholder profit rather than by public good, like members of this committee? EU and Irish history shows the risks of this approach. I know those here will not have forgotten the stress and strain that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis. Strong enforceable rules for corporations must be seen as a vital ingredient to their success, our social contract and our democracy.

Given the time, I will move onto my conclusion. This is not just about future policy. Ms Clarke mentioned Omnibus 1 and the row-back on corporate due diligence, but some of the directives on renewable energy, energy efficiency and the energy performance of buildings could also be up for review during our EU Presidency. These directives are absolutely crucial for us in completing our energy transition and staying within our climate targets. If they are to be reopened, we hope they will be strengthened rather than weakened. The question is clear. Will Ireland's EU Presidency choose to defend climate ambition and the integrity of EU law or will it preside over its further erosion, which is happening right now? I thank the members for their time.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis na finnéithe go léir agus cuirim fáilte rompu. These are absolutely vital issues that need to be put on the agenda for the EU Presidency. At a very simplistic level, we maintain two notions in relation to the European Union. At times, we all fall into the idea that it is about over-regulation and rules we do not like. I understand those rules are there for a reason. In certain instances, such as with some of the energy taxation rules, there probably is a need for flexibility. While we do that, we also remember that this State has benefited from a more progressive outlook in Europe in relation to workers' rights, women's rights at work and a whole pile of other issues, particularly environmental issues. It is about getting the balance right. Everyone wants to see competition and successful businesses that provide taxation revenue that can be used to deliver required services. However, we can also talk about the financial crash and the amount of capital and power that has been concentrated to a greater degree in a smaller number of people. That is before we talk about corporations. I remember when Facebook was not a thing. We are now talking about companies that have budgets bigger than those of an awful lot of the economies in Europe and beyond. These companies obviously have significant power. I have a considerable number of issues with the American regime but the close relationship with tech companies creates its own issues.

I will start with Ms Clarke, who mentioned "strengthened corporate consultation channels, reduced civil society participation, and a growing emphasis on competitiveness over rights protections." Will she instance some examples? I understand the particular example she gave, that of the Rana Plaza. That shows us very obviously how all of this has impacted on people's lives. That is before we even talk about Europe refusing to suspend the EU-Israel association agreement, but will Ms Clarke answer on that first point initially?

Ms Evie Clarke:

I thank the Deputy for that very important question. This is an issue that is worth making very clear. As a coalition, we are not opposed to genuine simplification. As the Deputy said, there are-----

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Everyone is up for streamlining.

Ms Evie Clarke:

Exactly. We are not opposed to that but what we are seeing here is in no way simplification. It is deregulation through and through. With regard to those specific processes and to give an idea of the timeline for the passing of the CSDDD, which was approved by the European Parliament on the 11th anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, less than a year later, the Commission announced its omnibus proposal. That was supposed to amend three specific pieces of legislation - the CSDDD, the corporate sustainability reporting directive, CSRD, and the green taxonomy - with the reasoning that this would simplify the rules. However, what we saw in practice was not simplification but an entire reopening of the corporate sustainability due diligence directive and the removal of the entirety of its substance, all the elements that would have made it effective for workers in community to access justice and any reference to climate transition plans whatsoever. The terminology used just does not match up with what is happening in practice.

In addition, with regard to the processes used, the excessive invocation by the Commission of urgent procedures in respect of these legislative proposals has meant a speeding-up of the revision of these directives, without proper accountability, proper impact assessments and proper stakeholder engagement. In fact, the European Ombudsman assessed the Commission's overuse of these urgent procedures and determined that it very clearly amounted to maladministration. She noted that the Commission adopted a broad interpretation of urgency without justification, failed to ensure a transparent, evidence-based and inclusive preparation of such proposals, limited interservice consultation and did not act in an accountable manner. This all goes against the Commission's own better regulation principles for good lawmaking. A very clear precedent with regard to what is actually needed has been set by the European Ombudsman's response to the Commission's actions. Rather than closed-door consultations that are predominantly attended by large fossil fuel companies and that completely exclude civil society, what is needed is genuine civil society engagement. We do not need an over-reliance on corporate engagement through these new channels, which are referred to as "implementation dialogues" and "reality checks" but are essentially just direct channels between the corporates and the Commission.

Ms Deirdre Duffy:

I will speak very briefly because Ms Clarke has covered the rules. The ombudsman very clearly set out the answer to the Deputy's question on inclusion and transparent decision-making. I worked very closely on procedural rights and victims' rights at EU level under Article 6 of the habitats directive. Consultation, transparency and the publication of documentation is the way to do it rather than through back channels. We know that it takes a little bit more time and consideration. That is exactly what the members do in this committee. It is very important not only for the end result, but so that we do not alienate people from the process and make people even more distrustful of the EU and its legislation.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Too much power is given to corporate interests.

Obviously, the European Union has to work from a point of view of corporate interests but it has to take into account wider society. If we talk about the piece that Dr. Ryan spoke about, we are talking about corporate interests that can actually impact on people's views and can do things that have a huge mental-health impact on people. We have seen in those recent cases and even that have been impactful in relation to circumstances where people have died and then the companies have not taken action. That is what whistleblowers like Frances Haugen and others have said. We used to give out about Facebook. We will not talk too much about X given its current boss. TikTok is almost what Facebook was but on steroids. We can see its huge impact on society and it is the fact that we have no choice but regulation. I get the point being made about the Data Protection Commissioner and those vital pieces of information that are used to profile and then to push people in certain directions, just from a point of view of making money. It is seeing whether it is Coimisiún na Meán or the commission operating the Digital Services Act and what is beyond, that there is a real need for it. To a degree, there will be a need for bravery from states like ourselves, because we will have to go against interests that have a huge footprint here - and on some level very positive from an employment and taxation point of view - and are having an impact. It is very obvious that we are in the cowboys and indians phase and we need to get into something far better that is more suitable for society.

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

We may be in a kind of a wild west scenario and the important thing to say is that we are the only sheriff by law and we are not behaving as a sheriff; we are tying our hands. It is not Coimisiún na Meán that matters. It actually does not have much power. It is the Data Protection Commission and it always was. The Digital Services Act is a red herring and there a striking case that the European Court of Justice decided on in January last year. It has this striking title which I will read out. It indicates just where the problem lies. The title of this European Court of Justice decision is Irish Data Protection Commission v. European Data Protection Board. It is us against everybody else. In this case, the Irish Data Protection Commission, DPC, had gone to Europe's highest court and sued all of its counterparts, which had never happened before, because they had voted to force it to investigate what Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook do with people's most intimate data. The DPC had resisted that for years. When it was finally forced by vote to do so, instead of investigating Meta, it went to the European Court of Justice and said, "Please tell us to not do our job." As we can see, the decision is very brief and the court dismissed that, but Meta had received one year's reprieve. I am struck by the fact that the then Data Protection Commissioner has recently revealed that she has gone to work for Meta's law firm and it has many cases live against the DPC on behalf of Meta and on behalf of TikTok, so we have a problem.

Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I would just remind members about identifying bodies and people.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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We have a huge problem. In fairness, Dr. Ryan has dealt with the idea across the board of the serious worry about such corporate power and the inability or the unwillingness of states to deal with it. These people have huge resources and huge tentacles. If we are then talking about the impact this could have on environmental concerns, that is a wider question that we need to be able to almost reframe in the sense we keep talking about energy security and whatever else. The only way we can deliver that is by actually getting into the real world on delivery of wind power, in particular, and other renewables so that we are not as reliant on fossil fuels. I get that none of this is simple, but we have done a hell of a lot of talking about this and not enough delivery for a number of years. We certainly do not need a European Union or European Commission that weakens itself, which in turn then weakens us from a point of view of delivery on what is needed and is best for us, the wider European Union and the world.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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Just a couple of things and I hope the Chair gives a bit of flexibility.

Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I have been giving a lot of flexibility, as you can see, Deputy Crowe.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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The system here is that we have five minutes and it is hard to get a conversation in that time. As part of that five minutes, the witnesses' response is part of that as well. It is difficult to give the issue due diligence with the system we have at the moment. Let us see how it goes.

I spoke earlier in the Dáil about how the EU should be a much stronger player in preventing conflict and protecting human rights and international law. We hear all the time, and I suppose the witnesses are as sick and tired as I am of hearing, about how the EU is closely monitoring the situation in the Middle East, Sudan or other conflicts around the world. It is almost like the EU is an impotent bystander in relation to many of these things that are happening. One of the successful things relating to the Irish Presidency is that we asked that a day or part of a day would be set aside to discuss conflict resolution. As we know, fewer countries are involved in conflict resolution than was the case ten years ago, for instance, even though there are probably more conflicts around the world.

What would Dr. Ryan like to see coming out of that conference? My worry is that we will have this conference - wherever it is going to be - have all the organisations coming together, general agreement about what is happening around the world, and then there is no action. Last week, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, spoke to the committee about the plans for the EU Presidency, and the simplification thing came up. I asked the Minister of State to give me an example in housing, and maybe it was the way I asked the question but he did not give me an answer. No one is opposed to simple language or the idea that regulations or laws would be simple to understand. What has been outlined today is quite worrying if that is the direction we are going with simplification. Dr. Ryan might give us some more examples of that. I am old enough to remember the banking collapse and the lack of regulation there and what Dr. Ryan is saying about the Data Protection Commission. I am conscious that we are not supposed to mention people's name and so on but the lack of regulation and the lack of input regarding it is deeply worrying, given what Dr. Ryan is saying is happening there. Will Dr. Ryan expand on what he thinks we should be doing, particularly around the Presidency? As he says, there will be pressure regarding the movement forward in this. If many of the big regulatory bodies, especially for tech, are based in Ireland and we need to do more in relation to them, what does Dr. Ryan suggest we do as we move forward, particularly around the Presidency? Does he expect that pressure to be applied in relation to the Irish Presidency, and what does he think we should be doing?

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

To pick up on this idea of simplification, simplification would be nice, but that is not what is being proposed by the Commission. What it is proposing is a new tranche of definitional uncertainty. We will not know, for example, when data are personal data and when they are not, if we go by the Commission's proposal. A new Council Presidency text has just been circulated that moves the pieces around the board a little but that uncertainty persists. If the objective was to make life easier for small- and medium-sized business and for Europe's innovators, there are things that could have been proposed. One thing, though, even without a change to law, is very obviously to enforce against the big players. The local butcher and the local sports team are all using Microsoft Office. If we enforce against Microsoft, we have a trickle-down compliance effect that is unavoidable. That is not what is being proposed because that would require that Ireland do its job since Microsoft is here.

Therefore, we come back again to the problem. We have to confront it in the way we confronted the fact that we are a tax haven. It took a long time for people to accept that, and now we are something even worse than a tax haven.

I have just a quick thought on the other question, which concerned conflict resolution. This only concerns certain conflicts. It is not universal. However, there is a strong case to be made that increasing levels of extremity in politics are being algorithmically amplified. That is probably not too controversial. If that is the case, enforcing to ensure the algorithms are not automatically on is a matter of urgency. That is all the more the case because those algorithms are no longer just pushing extremity into our feeds and pitting communities against each other for profit; those algorithms are being operated by companies that have to do whatever Donald J. Trump tells them. That is another element. It is about time we weaned ourselves off this automatic algorithm-gets-a-legal-pass system that we have.

Ms Evie Clarke:

Although I know it has been stressed, it is really important to bring things back to the scale of the deregulation we are seeing. The three of us here today are highlighting only three very specific initiatives, namely, those related to the environment, digital and corporate accountability. However, what is actually happening is that the entirety of EU law is now open to being revised and watered down by the European Commission.

The European Commission’s 2026 work plan is the most deregulatory in the history of the EU. Over half of its proposals are deregulatory in nature. That includes the issues we are talking about today, but also the issues of food and feed, chemicals and legislation relating to pesticides, and so many more areas, including online safety. This is only the start of what is happening. That is why we wanted to highlight the first omnibus and the corporate accountability legislation as the test case and blueprint for what is to come, including the processes that were used, or not used, to push that legislation through. That is really only the very beginning, the tip of the iceberg. Every area you can think of is at risk of being reopened in a similar way. For example, there is also a social omnibus targeting labour rights. ICTU, another member organisation of the ICBHR, is very concerned about that. Some of the coalition’s academic and legal members are incredibly concerned about access to justice in the courts. Again, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Regarding what Ireland should be focusing on during the Presidency, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Helen McEntee, has stressed that competitiveness, security and values are going to be the centrepiece of the policy priorities. There is just a massive prioritisation of competitiveness. The really important question for this committee and the Irish Government to consider ahead of its Presidency is how the values aspect is actually going to be protected. If fundamental rights, workers’ rights, environmental protection and digital rights are not coming within that values piece, what exactly is it made up of?

Ms Deirdre Duffy:

I thank the Deputy very much for the question. I have just a few points. It is really positive that the conflict resolution is happening. Fossil fuels are driving conflict globally. They are the cause of conflict. Also, in conflict zones, the harm from fossil fuels and their use in conflict is really quite stark. An ecocide is happening in Gaza, as well as a genocide, and both together are destroying the region and its people.

Reference was made to simplification. Everyone agrees it is a good word. We all like things to be simple but what I really want to talk about, and I think my colleagues agree, is implementation. Just because it is not completely straightforward to implement things all the time, and we need evidence, dialogue and stakeholder involvement, that does not mean it is not worth doing.

Consider the directives I spoke about that are crucial to getting the 38% of people in rural Ireland who are dependent on oil, and who have really felt the impact since the start of the Iran war, off oil. If we are going to think about them and give them access to the same energy that is available in China, for example, and if we are talking about competitiveness, we should be implementing the directives, not simplifying them. They are ready. There are funds available – for example, the social climate fund, on which the Government has still not submitted its report. There are various factors and platforms at European level. Instead of putting our energy into some row-back in response to corporate interests, we should actually be painting the vision for clean, homegrown energy that is renewable and efficient.

I have two more points. Unfortunately, we have seen deregulation under the guise of simplification creep into our national politics, specifically in relation to the critical infrastructure Bill, which members will be across. Certain aspects of that, most worryingly the disapplication of the climate Act, are being brought through in the name of simplification as well. This is not just an EU-level issue; it is also something that is now coming into the national Parliament.

On what was said about conflict resolution, the big issues and the question of where we go from here, for us there is a fundamental ask of the Irish State during its EU Presidency as chair of COP31 on behalf of the EU. Now is the time of reckoning for fossil fuel lobbyists. They must be excluded from the negotiations. It will happen. It has to happen. Ireland is really well placed to do it. We would not bring a tobacco company into a discussion about getting people off cigarettes and finding another way to live. I have no idea why we still think it is okay to do that with fossil fuel lobbyists. In fairness, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, has said this publicly. There is a willingness to do what we need to do. The State and Oireachtas should get behind that and try to use it as Ireland’s diplomatic win in this EU Presidency.

Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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In the past two weeks, people have been talking about the energy crisis. People talk about a just transition and say they are not seeing it in their own lives. To go back to the issue of simplification, the simplistic answer of many is to drill for oil ourselves, the view being that it would solve the problem and ensure we would not be reliant on others. How do the witnesses respond to that?

Ms Deirdre Duffy:

It is not going to get us out of this in the immediate or long term, obviously. Recent times have really brought to the fore the interlinkage between social justice and the climate transition and the fact that we have to bring everyone with us and protect people who are feeling under the most pressure, putting the most vulnerable first. That is why I mentioned rural Ireland, where people often do not have a choice. Renters, lone parents and people with disabilities may also be much further behind.

The reality is that we have a pathway, including in relation to the three directives. One of the big elephants in the room at the moment is that the influx of data centres in Ireland is guzzling up more of our renewable energy, meaning it is not available for new houses, people in rural Ireland and those in the areas around the centres.

My response in relation to drilling more is that, first, we know we have to keep fossil fuels in the ground. That is what the science tells us. The storms are only going to get worse. Second, given the way government policy is going, drilling for more oil is actually just feeding big industry, like data centres. What we need to do is release the power of our renewable resources. We have everything we need on this island. We need to release that power for homes, businesses and people right across the country. To go back to the issue of corporate lobbying, back channels and the lack of transparency, we need to make communities across the country feel as though they are driving this transition and that it is not something they are distant from.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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I have a couple of questions. I will first go to Ms Clarke. I had the pleasure of her presentation to the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment where we discussed some of the summaries. If we are treating the two committees as separate entities, I want to know if she received any feedback on her contribution to the enterprise committee some time back? Has there been any feedback in terms of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade or any grouping vis-à-vis the Irish Presidency's priorities? Has there been any indication that any of the points she raised will be taken on board?

I will go to Mr. Ryan next. I could talk on his issue for a considerable time as well. In terms of the ineffectiveness of our data protection enforcement bodies in Ireland, is it down to staffing? I am not going into conspiracy theories, but given our huge dependence on revenue from data and IT companies, does he believe in some way, shape or form that the Government is actually discouraging enforcement or is it down to just a bog-standard actual lack of staffing and funding? I take on board the court action that was taken against our European partners, which suggests some sort of wilful intent. In general, Europe is a little bit more proactive. Some cases were taken against the companies. Does Mr. Ryan believe those cases were ineffectual or just too little?

I want to make a general comment on the Government. I queried its new regulations on Internet access for under-16s where it is making everything voluntary. Does Mr. Ryan think we are falling short as a State? When he says that we should maybe divest ourselves from any data protection side of things at EU level, is that because we are an abject failure, or does he think we have a conflict of interest and it is coming through?

Finally, in relation to Ms Duffy, the climate issue is hugely important, especially with today being Earth Day, which coincides with Friends of the Earth's birthday as well. On the role that energy security plays in reducing the impact of climate change, I have constantly raised the issue of the need to upgrade our grid infrastructure, allow more for private wires, be able to use tidal energy, be able to harness wave energy, offshore wind development is too slow and then through to hydrogen conversion and battery storage. We have huge potential to be a net exporter and to be finally able to gain revenue without guilt from data companies in terms of the storage of the information in Ireland.

I have one final question. From a European perspective in terms of our Presidency, I suggested to the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, during Statements on Post European Council in the Dáil earlier that maybe we need to try to get a Europe-wide investment in Irish energy infrastructure on a 50:50 basis because we would be exporting clean, renewable energy whether it is electricity through the French interconnector or through other means to our European partners because energy security is vital. Hungary, for example, is still dependent on Russia. We need to move away from fossil fuels and from dangerous countries that we cannot trust going forward. I am interested in Ms Duffy's feedback on that.

Ms Evie Clarke:

I thank the Deputy for his questions and the follow-up from our meeting last summer. The coalition was incredibly grateful for the really strong political contribution by the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Tourism and Employment following our session. Just for context, there was a very strong political contribution, which included recommendations that stakeholder engagement be strengthened, civil liability be put back into the law we were talking about, the CSDDD, and climate transition plans also be reinserted into that law.

The reason we are here is there was no substantive engagement with the relevant Department, the Department of enterprise, on that issue from us or on the political contribution from the committee which we were very disappointed by. Civil society in Ireland and in the EU has been experiencing a closing of the civil society space in recent times, and we have failed to be able to get in the room with the relevant Ministers. There has also been a reduction in meaningful engagement with civil society in the sense that the points that we are putting forward are actually taking account of as part of the policymaking process. That is why we are here again today to try to put forward the same messages but also to signal the alarm for the deregulation that is coming in all of those other areas that we have already mentioned.

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

I thank the Deputy for that very thoughtful question. The State does have a role and does have questions to answer, particularly the Department of justice. The questions are: who is doing the enforcing and how do we select them? We have obtained the papers from the most recent selection process and what we see is that the Department of justice's specified selection criteria for generic Civil Service capacities are utterly generic and are not for serous enforcers and investigators who would be capable of supervising some of the most sophisticated organisations that have ever emerged in the human story. Clearly, this is ridiculous. It seems that it would be almost impossible for a credible enforcer to make it onto the shortlist. I know many people who applied. They were a mix of very capable and qualified people of international renown. None were shortlisted by the State. If they were shortlisted, then the little bit of the interview set aside to determine their expertise, we now know from the documents, would have been led by a corporate lawyer who works for big tech, so there is a problem there. There was a problem with the composition of the panel.

We have also found from correspondence with the State bodies that there seems to have been no check to find out whether the potential nominees for our new Data Protection Commissioner had stock options from former employers they would have been supervising, nor if they were gagged by non-disparagement clauses as is typical in some of those companies. The result is we hired Meta's former chief lobbyist during the time of the Cambridge Analytica and Frances Haugen debacle, so that is where we are.

On top of that, we also have a revolving door issue, but the revolving door issue is only an issue if you have the right people in the room in the first place. We do not.

Let me add an angle. One might think that at least in the data sphere, if the enforcer is rendered incapable of enforcing, for one reason or another, whatever the motive may be, at least bodies such as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties are able to litigate. We have that right. However, the State has also unlawfully and incorrectly transposed the collective redress directive. This is a new European directive that allows for class actions. Whereas the State has allowed for commercial arbitration to use private litigation finance, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties cannot use the same type of finance to defend, for example, children against TikTok and Meta.

This is part of the reasoning for why we are saying the State should recuse itself from all digital issues during the Presidency.

Paula Butterly (Louth, Fine Gael)
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Thank you. Does Deputy Gogarty have other questions?

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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I am conscious of the time. I am also conscious of having to do this remotely because I am on a crutch. I would like to get some follow-up on the energy security question.

Ms Deirdre Duffy:

I thank the Deputy for the question. He is going to the heart of the current debate on the new LNG terminal, for example, and what we have been experiencing in the current fuel crisis. There is no doubt that the technology, as the Deputy knows better than I, is either fully there or nearly very much there. What we are missing in terms of clean renewable energy, as opposed to fossil energy, is the political and strategic will to deliver it. Again, the Deputy might know this better than I, but a few decades ago, when we started to build wind energy in Ireland, we did so at the same time as Denmark. However, Denmark kept the pressure on and developed it as a strategic national asset. It is now almost fully and independently energy secure, unlike us, because we did not continue on that trajectory.

It sounds to me that the Deputy’s conversation with the Minister is exactly the type of thinking that we need. It also points to the fact that when a select group of industry influencers are getting access and are in the room, that is how policy-making becomes skewed. Obviously, it is a bit different for a TD like Deputy Gogarty. I am happy to provide written information to the Deputy on Friends of the Earth's view on that proposal. I spoke to somebody earlier today who was telling me about food security. Our national strategy on food does not envisage any home-grown foods - that is, food made here in Ireland, for Irish people.

I will conclude by saying that as we look to this Presidency, which we will not have again for a long period afterwards, and as we look at the basic needs that the people of Ireland have, like energy, food and the ability to move around the place in a way that they can afford and that is easy, they are the type of things that we need to build on here at home, and not be reliant on other countries. Indeed, the EU bloc itself should be looking at those things in their entirety.

Robert O'Donoghue (Dublin Fingal West, Labour)
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I have just come from a meeting on food security, and I could not agree more in that regard. Exporting beef and importing vegetables - that would be my take on it.

Happy birthday, Deirdre. It is good to see you. Deirdre and I used to work together a good while back.

I totally agree with regard to the fossil fuel lobby and COP31, particularly if there is going to be a reckoning this year. It is madness. Energy security is probably a good way of putting across the climate transition. It brings people out because it hits them in their pockets, primarily. As we know, climate change is the biggest issue that we are going to be facing in our lifetimes, but energy security resonates more, particularly in the last weeks and months, among people outside the bubble of Leinster House. I ask the witnesses to try to be specific on this issue.

The Draghi report put forward competitiveness and simplification, and there is good and bad to that. These are not going to be implemented during our Presidency, so it is a case of looking forward. Two items are the 28th regime and the savings and investment union, which will allow scalability and investment across the economy broadly, including, hopefully, for renewables. To my mind, that is the only way we will get energy security here. However, can the witnesses see any ethical drawbacks or challenges with those two items, the 28th regime and the savings and investment union, that might come up in the future? We heard this morning that some €300 billion of European savings go annually to the stock markets - to Wall Street, basically - because we do not have a similar bourse in, say, Frankfurt. It would be positive if that were to remain in the EU. It is easy to talk positively about this, but can the witnesses point out any drawbacks?

Ms Evie Clarke:

I will deal with the general competitiveness question first. As the Deputy said, a lot of this originated from the report by Mario Draghi that was commissioned by the European Commission. Essentially, the whole competitiveness compass that the European Commission has gone forward with since then has centred largely around this and around the corporate lobby. The Draghi report does not include any empirical evidence whatsoever to show how the deregulation of the CSDDD or similar labour rights or environmental initiatives would be in any way cost-saving. In fact, research has been done more recently showing how, since the omnibus was completed, European companies have had to fork out enormous sums of money for legal and consultancy fees to adapt to these ever-changing rules coming from the European Commission. Therefore, even that very basic argument is on incredibly shaky ground, and that is without looking at the actual cost to people on the planet that we do have evidence of.

On the 28th regime specifically, for reference, this is a proposal that would be a parallel set of EU rules that companies could choose to opt in to instead of adhering to national rules on labour rights, taxation and insolvency. It would be a much lower standard, allowing employers to go by these lower standards rather than the national laws that are already in force. The Deputy asked for arguments that are not positive. The unions are incredibly concerned about this. We know that ICTU is very concerned about this and has been working on it. It had a big event in Cork a few weeks ago alongside the European Trade Union Confederation, ETUC. There are also massive concerns about the unions being completely left out of the room for the negotiations on the 28th regime. We would be happy to provide more detail on that to the Deputy after the meeting.

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

It is an interesting question. There is a lot in the Draghi report to disagree with, but the premise is absolutely correct. There was the Draghi report, the Letta report and the Niinistö report, which was looking at security. President von der Leyen requested these three reports at the same time because it is clear that Europe is in crisis. Europe has a crisis of its own making, but it is caught in an east-west pincer that we know well. It is a valid question: how can you unlock €10 trillion from the savings accounts of Europe to invigorate Europe's innovators, and how, having admired the problem for decades, can we actually create a functioning Single Market that works? It is impossible to be negative about that. What we have seen in the last year is how little Europe matters. Europe, at its best, is the guardian of human rights values in the world. In the past, it has had the power to broaden and project those values and those civil liberties. What we have learned in the last year is that it no longer has that.

I am not attending today to say anything against innovation. I am saying nothing against business growth. Our argument is that much of what is in the omnibus, in a kind of reactionary opposition to regulation, ignores the fact that if we enforced our data rules, we would unlock business growth.

The human rights agenda and the innovation agenda very often work well together. We have slightly imbibed a very cleverly articulated industry narrative over the past five years and made it a European one, but it is absolutely hostile to the principles that Europe has in its foundation documents.

Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats)
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I thank the witnesses very much for being here. I am just jumping in. I apologise if I ask questions or bring up topics that have already been covered. I have not had access to the statements, other than what was available online. A lot of my questions are going to focus on Dr. Ryan's contribution and work as director of enforce. I will pick up on his comments on the current narrative that we are experiencing. I am coming up against it in so many ways. A lot of my focus is on the tech space, AI and the digital omnibus that is currently progressing. Many other measures are being done under the banner of simplification and harmonisation. I have done more and more digging into this. I appreciate that small and medium businesses are finding that there are duplicate measures which require them, for example, to submit the same information under two different compliance measures or directives. That is fine and I have no doubt we need to fix that. I fully support doing so. Big tech, however, has hijacked that agenda and is pushing for deregulation. Simplification and harmonisation are being used as a narrative to promote deregulation and strip back the protections and rights that we know and cherish as European citizens and that are, I believe, the hallmarks of Europe.

On Dr. Ryan's last comments, I echo his concerns around that. It is something that I have been raising on multiple fronts. Under that banner of simplification, I have had to push back on the digital omnibus which the Government is supporting. My main question around that is this. If we are so over-regulated in this space, then how did Grok happen and how do we still have no resolution for it?

On procurement, I brought through a procurement Bill a couple months ago on quality and public procurement. It was essentially under the banner of simplification and potential changes in the procurement ethos of the European Union that is coming down the track on multiple other locations.

I will go into some of the concerns that the ICCL's enforce unit has aired around the Data Protection Commission. In 2021, at a hearing before the committee on justice, the DPC openly acknowledged that it does not decide GDPR complaints. At least 99.93% of such complaints see no decision, despite €19.1 million funding. The DPC's 2024 annual report states that it concluded 2,357 formal complaints and resolved 8,418 cases through amicable means. That refers to an informal resolution rather than a binding decision. This long-standing interpretation that handling a complaint does not necessarily require a decision does not seem to have changed at all. I have major concerns about that. I also have concerns around the governance that is now being built in the AI and regulatory spaces.

I invite the witnesses to comment that. We need to make that a hallmark of our Presidency. It is not just about promoting the competitive and enterprise element of this discussion but, more so, the rights and protections. I apologise; I have used up a lot of time.

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

I was struck by the question the Deputy asked the chair of the DPC in the AI committee last month. She asked the simple question as to whether the DPC had ever completed an inquiry into Google. There was a lot of hemming and hawing, but the ultimately the answer was "No", that the DPC had never completed an inquiry into Google, inclusive of subsidiaries. It is a decade since the GDPR, but that goes back to 1995 with the directive before the GDPR. We do not need to look too far for evidence that there is a grave and profound problem, especially since everyone present is probably aware of the US court decision against YouTube, which is Google. That concerned addiction of children and children's mental health.

On the simplification, it is clear there is a problem and the problem is here. The simplification did not treat with that problem. Instead, what the Commission has done is it has introduced definitional uncertainty. We will not know what personal data are, for example. The latest Presidency text changes that a little bit, but it still a little bit uncertain. It is clear that if a small business wants certainty, it would like to see the really big vendors in their area - let us say, it is a local butcher - such as Microsoft, which the butcher uses, being forced to comply and then the small business is in receipt of its service benefit from a trickle-down legality, in a sense. However, when there is not enforcement at the top, there is a lot of uncertainty all the way through the system.

The Deputy mentioned AI. Last week, I was in Berlin where I spoke at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, which is the Christian Democratic Union's, CDU, think tank. The focus for the CDU, as it is for any capital one goes to, is AI. How will we compete? How can we compete? There is a simple truth, and that is that any big tech company that has got big on the merits of some product - let us say email and it is able to take the data from email, maps and ads and use it over here for AI training data - that is an unassailable, inescapable lead that no European company will ever catch up on. That is only possible because we have not enforced the purpose limitation principle, which is Article 5(1)(b) of the GDPR, and that is Ireland's fault. So long as non-EU giant firms are allowed to continue to dominate Europe's market because Ireland fails to enforce, we are not going to see innovator scale here. We are also going to see a continuing mental health problem for kids, a national security problem and many other problems besides.

Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for my lateness. On the point that Dr. Ryan was making, "Prime Time" highlighted an issue in relation to dealing with informed consent. It involved an individual in my office where a so-called data broker sold or gave a package of sample data to RTÉ. It was able to isolate Leinster House, for example, and identity the phones, albeit not by name. I am not sure exactly how the phones and packages of data were identified, possibly by IP address or IME. Each phone within the complex can be isolated and it can follow the phone home. It can identify where the person lives and match the address with the identity of the person. It can see if that person maybe has children and if they are bringing them to school, where they go shopping and where they sleep in their house. It is the most extraordinary intrusion. When this was brought up, the investigation was told that this practice was GDPR compliant. I cannot imagine that it is. The DPC is aware of it and was consulted as part of the investigation. I hope something will be done about that.

In the broader context of enforcement of the GDPR across Europe, Grok and other such platforms were mentioned. Is there a wholesale gathering of personal information across the Continent that is simply not being addressed by any of the regulatory agencies?

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for his question. I worked extensively with "Prime Time" on that investigation. It built off something that we had done in the ICCL and its enforce unit a few years back. We pretended to be a data buyer. We had a fake headquarters based in Tel Aviv. We went to various data vendors and purchased examples, similar to what RTÉ did. We had examples from every European country. To give the committee a sense of the kind of person involved, we could see government decision-maker, counter-terror and national security. It was that sensitive. It could also see divorce, STDs, what the diet was, what the medicines were and what the psychological conditions were. These are extraordinarily intimate data. They are commercially available. One can just go and buy them. That is only possible because in online advertising there is a gigantic free-for-all of data. When someone visits any website or uses an app, there is a system behind the scenes that is operating an auction for his or her attention. I will spend a minute explaining this because it might be useful for members to know where that data came from.

Everyone who wants to buy the opportunity to show an ad to you in particular receives information about you, including identification codes that allow them to stitch together any new information, such as you are now standing here reading this, with their extensive dossier they have already built up about you. They can then decide whether they want to show you this particular ad for a car test drive, for example. That is how the auction system works. It is called real-time bidding. I blew the whistle because I worked in that industry. I blew the whistle to the DPC in 2017. I filed the first formal complaint because it was not acting in 2018. We have been to the European Court of Justice on the consent question. You cannot consent to a data breach because they cannot know what they are asking you to consent to. We are still waiting for the Data Protection Commission to produce anything of substance.

Every indication I have seen is that when it produces something, it will avoid dealing with the issue. We have an ongoing data breach of what every single person is doing, what they are watching, reading and listening to, where they are moving and who they are interacting with. As part of our investigation, we found an Israeli firm that sells a product that will show you your target's most frequent driving route and when they meet other targets. This is dangerous. We have found so many dangerous examples. One we sent to the DPC showed a Polish data broker had a segment of 200 Irish people tagged as incest and abuse support. When that "Prime Time" documentary aired, the DPC should have been well aware of this because we had already taken it to court for not investigating it.

Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Dr. Ryan says you cannot consent to a data breach, but I presume you can consent to share your data in whatever way you want. On informed consent, my understanding of why this happens is people sign up to apps and you get 40 pages of legal jargon that is impenetrable. People just click okay without ever reading them, even if you are forced to scroll down to the bottom of it. You have no understanding of what it actually means. Therefore, they sign up to consenting to share their location data or other things.

One of the issues we should be looking at legislatively is requiring what I am calling "informed consent" but requiring those app manufacturers or those companies to actually headline the big permission you are giving or the big piece of your own personal data you are giving away. Is that something we can do?

Dr. Johnny Ryan:

That is a worthy goal. I caution about how you might execute it. In a situation where hundreds of parties receive the data billions of times a day - we have released a report on the scale and it is extraordinary the scale this occurs at - there is no possible way for there to be security in that system. It is like if you took your secrets in a box, climbed up to the top of a skyscraper and threw them over the side. It would not matter what you had signed on the way up the stairs. There is no control.

In a situation where there is no control, as the person requesting your consent on behalf of these 800 other companies, I cannot know what will happen to the data so I cannot ask you to accept something because it is impossible for me to know. This is not just me saying it. In 2017, during lobbying for the e-privacy regulation, which is now defunct, the industry trade body, IAB Europe, which we have engaged with on this, wrote to the Commission and said the GDPR would apply the following year, that they would have no way of asking for consent for all of these things, and so would it give them an exemption from the e-privacy regulation? We already have a decision from the European Court of Justice on this. We have decision from the relevant court, which is actually in Belgium, that says this system is very dangerous and will need to be dramatically changed.

The fundamental principle is you must keep people's intimate data safe. No one would dispute that. This is not about competitiveness, it is just obvious. You cannot have a data free-for-all. If you accept that, you cannot red tape this away. What industry has done for the past decade, almost, is it has spammed us with red tape that was meaningless. It was a thin veneer of compliance theatre and it added hours of hassle for everyone.

Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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I thank Dr. Ryan. Does anyone else want to come in at this stage? I do not want to detain our witnesses any further and I appreciate their time. There are so many important dimensions of the Presidency and the work we will do so it is very important to hear from all of our witnesses. I thank Dr. Johnny Ryan, director of enforce at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Ms Evie Clarke, co-ordinator for the Irish Coalition for Business and Human Rights, and Ms Deirdre Duffy, CEO of Friends of the Earth. I thank them all for their time, for the benefit of their perspectives on these issues and for coming to join us today. I thank them very much.

We will enter private session now to discuss some housekeeping issues before adjourning until Wednesday, 29 April at 3.30 p.m., which will be a private meeting. We will go into private session now and suspend for five minutes to allow the witnesses to leave. Is that agreed? Agreed.