Sustainability holds firm on Irish boardroom agendas
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Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. Welcome back to Breakfast Business with me, Tom McEnany, standing in for Joe Lynham. Now, sustainability continues to rank highly on the agenda of Irish businesses in spite of geopolitical uncertainty, economic headwinds and a shifting regulatory landscape. That's according to EY Ireland's latest State of Sustainability report. With me now to discuss the report is Dorarca Dennis, EY Ireland partner. Good morning, Dorarca.
Good morning. How are you?
I'm not too bad. Now... De Rarca, you're the Sustainability Services Lead at EUY. Are you surprised that Irish leaders are continuing to prioritise sustainability?
What are the current sustainability priorities for Irish businesses?
I suppose I'm not from my experiences working with clients and speaking to people in the market. I think it's a priority for people because it's a matter of resilience.
OK, the thing that surprised me about this report was that when I think about sustainability, I'm usually thinking about climate. But there's been a shift now to companies prioritising their involvement with the community.
Absolutely. It's actually very pleasing to see that because it was very much part of the Irish culture to think about communities being very much integral to a business. So 81% of the people that responded, we had over 200 people involved in the survey, actually said that this was something that was important and a priority for them, for their strategy and their future business. So very pleasing to see, along with the climate issues also being addressed, but they're somewhat more complex to address. So I suppose there's a little bit of balance of what can be done and what is impactful.
And is community taking over from climate because people are stepping back from climate commitments?
No, I think the low-hanging fruit on the climate side has been addressed over the last number of years. And I suppose what's happening is it's expanding. People are expanding the horizon as to what kind of sustainability means and broadening their perspective and making sure that they're addressing not just climate, but also the social impact. So...
People in general have shifted away from that focus on climate. You know, the Greens are no longer in government. Every political party is shedding its previous Green credentials. We're seeing at an international level that people are stepping away from previous commitments. Are companies still committed just on the climate part of sustainability?
They are. You'll see that there is a number of companies that are still speaking to their net zero targets. I think what's happened is it's become progressively harder to achieve kind of those incremental gains. The initial pieces in terms of their own productivity and the scope one and two emissions that we'll refer to have been addressed and are continuing to be addressed over time. But I think it's just become more challenging. And there is obviously a geopolitical challenge across every business in terms of just staying alive. And being in business. So I think people are doing it in a way that's more aligned to how they can address the issues in a way that isn't disruptive to their business. But it continues to be a focus for both businesses and the government.
So if they have picked all the low hanging fruit, the raka, what's left? Where are they focusing now?
Well, I think where they're focusing is thinking about energy efficiency and how they produce goods. And if they're producing goods from a service industry perspective, it's engaging with their customers and trying to understand how much their customers will absorb from a cost perspective. I think it's also thinking about the types of fuel that they do use. If they're not able to transition, what kind of fuel can you use?
OK. And talk to me about that community involvement. What does it look like?
What it looks like is integrating yourselves in the social kind of fabric of the community, investing in the community, upskilling employees so that if there is a change of regime, a change of types of employment, that people are being reskilled.
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