Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)

I do not think the two things are contradictory in the sense of what we need to do in this space. Obviously, we need to do everything. Small and medium businesses are really struggling right now but we do not need to sacrifice, for example, how we are going to meet our emissions targets or how we are going to ensure that employees' and workers' rights are protected within this space. Maintaining the CSDDD harmonised civil liability regime to prevent fragmentation and increased legal costs and ensuring justice for victims are really important. We also need to ensure that the CSDDD requirement to put into effect climate transition plans is maintained.

We need to protect the CSDDD provisions on stakeholder engagement. The changes brought about by the omnibus proposal not only render the CSDDD ineffective by making sure that companies will fail to identify the most severe risks that take place further down their value chains, but also fail in their stated aim of simplifying legislation. The changes will mean that all due diligence obligations are passed to suppliers. There is a way of getting this right but we need to get the balance right.

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