Ireland must fight EU attempts to erode environmental and human rights protections after the European Parliament voted to exempt more companies from green reporting rules, according to the Social Democrats.<\/p>\n
Sin\u00e9ad Gibney TD, the party\u2019s enterprise spokesperson, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cA majority of MEPs recently voted to rollback crucial human rights and environmental protections in favour of a deregulation agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the omnibus package aimed at gutting the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence directive now proceeding to trialogues between the EU Council, Commission and Parliament, it is vital that the government fulfils its commitments on achieving better regulation, not deregulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreviously, Irish and European consumers had the chance to know that the products they buy and the services they avail of are not the product of human rights violations, environmental violations, or other crimes across the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not unreasonable that big companies should have to do due diligence on what happens in their supply chains when they are making millions of euros a year. The Minister for Enterprise needs to be clear in any input from Ireland into the trialogues that the key pillars of the directive must be protected.<\/p>\n
\u201cCutting and slashing the effectiveness of the directive doesn\u2019t make the rules simpler. It just results in a tangled mess of deregulation through which big business can avoid accountability, leaving SMEs to navigate a piecemeal system. We need the government to step up and defend the directive, in line with the commitments made at home and the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise.”<\/p>\n
Senator Patricia Stephenson, who is the party\u2019s spokesperson on foreign affairs, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI am deeply concerned that reassurances given in the Oireachtas are not reflected at European level.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpeaking in the Seanad, Minister Neale Richmond said core provisions of the directive would be fought for and protected by this government. Yet Fine Gael MEPs voted alongside right-wing and far-right parties in the European Parliament to dismantle it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consequences of this omnibus package will be dire. These new deregulation policies will undermine the work we do across the Global South in defending communities from exploitation and environmental injustice.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor consumers in Ireland, it means we no longer have any guarantees that our clothes and products aren\u2019t having negative environmental consequences or made using forced or child labour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is bad for Irish consumers who care about sustainability and social justice but it\u2019s also a setback for our global climate goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
November 24, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ireland must fight EU attempts to erode environmental and human rights protections after the European Parliament voted to exempt more companies from green reporting rules, according to the Social Democrats. Sin\u00e9ad Gibney TD, the party\u2019s enterprise spokesperson, said: \u201cA majority of MEPs recently voted to rollback crucial human rights and environmental protections in favour of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[724,727,408,784,641,7,497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise","category-environment","category-foreign-affairs","category-human-rights","category-patricia-stephenson","category-press-release","category-sinead-gibney"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n