The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is expected to come into force in Ireland by June 2024 and drastically changes the sustainability reporting landscape. However, 38% of organisations do not know if they fall under the scope of this new legislation, according to our recent survey.
We polled more than 100 business leaders at our Sustainability Reporting – Compliance and Beyond webinar. The event provided an overview of the scope of the CSRD and its reporting requirements and, crucially, provided practical guidance on how to kickstart or improve a company’s sustainability reporting strategy.
Jay Sattin, Senior Associate in our Planning and Environment Law team, commented: “This legislation aims to harmonise and improve the nature and extent of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information which is made available to stakeholders. It will impose mandatory sustainability reporting requirements on approximately 50,000 companies across the EU and beyond. These include large ‘public interest’ undertakings, large undertakings, listed SMEs and certain non-EU undertakings which have a significant presence in the EU.”
The survey found that 79% of respondents potentially fall under the scope of the CSRD (41% confirmed they did, and 38% did not know). However, the findings also show that the majority of organisations (72%) do not currently report according to a sustainability standard or benchmark, with 45% not reporting on sustainability at all.
Partner Claire Lord, Head of our Governance and Compliance team, said: “Our survey highlights that there is still work to be done by organisations around understanding the scope of the CSRD. The directive will be rolled out gradually so organisations will have time to prepare for its requirements, but it is important that in-scope companies start to allocate resources and take action now. We are proactively working with clients on training and workshops, conducting a gap analysis, developing formal governance structures and updating their policies and procedures to prepare for the new regime.”
Insufficient expertise is seen as the biggest barrier to sustainability reporting (34%), followed by allocating sufficient resources (31%) and establishing governance frameworks (27%).
Read more about the survey results on Irish Legal News, or find out more about preparing for the CSRD.
The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.
