Business in Ireland 2024 - Corporate Sustainability Reporting

Introduction

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS), published as “Innovation in Irish Enterprises (IIE)” is a survey of innovation activities of enterprises in Ireland and other EU Member States.

The CIS is carried out under the Statistics (Community Innovation Survey) Order 2025 (S.I. No. 209 of 2025) made under the Statistics Act, 1993. The survey collects information about product and process innovation, as well as organisational and marketing innovations and other key variables during the three year period 2022 to 2024 inclusive. Most questions on the survey query whether the enterprise has introduced new or significantly improved goods or services or have implemented new or significantly improved business processes.

Data was collected in accordance with Section 33 of the Statistics Act, 1993 and with EU law and the survey was carried out under the agreed set of international rules as laid out in the OECD Oslo Manual.

CIS 2022-2024 was conducted using the Oslo Manual 2018, the 4^th and latest edition. There were a small number of changes to the questionnaire from previous versions, most notably the inclusion of questions about sustainable innovations. 

Data is strictly confidential and will be used only for statistical purposes.

Survey

The CIS (IIE) survey sampled enterprises with ten or more persons engaged in the selected NACE categories as included in the table below. The CSO conducted an online survey in 2025. Circa 4,450 survey forms were issued to the sampled enterprises from the CSO’s Business Register. The response rate was 53.2%.

Methodology

A description of the methodology is available within the Methods area on the CSO website.

Questionnaire

The current survey form is available on the CSO website. The results of questions included in section 9.1 “Environmental Innovations”, from question 9.1.1 to 9.1.8, have been used as the basis for this release.

Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

The EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a legislative framework requiring EU-based businesses – and certain non-EU companies – to disclose their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. What this means is that companies must treat environmental, social, and governance data with the same strict rules, digital formats, and independent audits as traditional financial reports. Outside of legal obligations, enterprises may still report voluntarily on non-financial matters (environmental performance for example), to signal to customers that sustainability is an important consideration for the enterprise (from a financial and a non-financial perspective).

Expectations are changing as regards what is expected legally.

Corporate Sustainability Reporting – Legal Requirements

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) was transposed into Irish law and came into effect on 06 July 2024. The aim of the directive was to modernise and strengthen the rules concerning the social and environmental information that companies report. The broad policy context relates to national and EU climate action plans which state as their objective to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050. This Directive applied to enterprises which were large public interest entities already reporting under Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD). In Ireland, it is expected to be a very small number of enterprises that would meet these thresholds. The data required to be supplied under the CSRD covers the following main areas:

• Double Materiality: Companies must report from two directions. They must show how outside environmental issues affect their business, and how their company impacts the outside world.
• Independent Assurance: A registered assurance provider must review the information and provide an assurance opinion.
• Standard Rules: Businesses must use the European Commission reporting standards.
• Joint Publishing: Companies must release their sustainability disclosures data as part of the management report that is included in its financial statements.

The Stop-the Clock Directive and the Omnibus I Directive – Changes to Legal Requirements

On 26 February 2025, the EU Commission published a package of Omnibus Proposals aimed at simplifying EU rules, boosting competitiveness, and unlocking additional investment capacity. To reduce burden on enterprises, the Omnibus Proposals include proposals to amend the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (Directive 2022/2464/EU). The EU narrowed the CSRD’s scope by raising its thresholds to only include companies with more than 1,000 employees and above €450m net annual turnover. The threshold had previously been to include companies with more than 500 employees. Listed small and medium sized enterprises are now excluded entirely. EU parent holding companies whose sole purpose is holding shares (financial holding undertakings) are now exempted from the CSRD’s scope. As a result, a much smaller number of Irish enterprises would now be covered by these reporting requirements.

The European Union (Corporate Sustainability Reporting) Regulations 2025, S.I. No. 309 of 2025, gave effect in Ireland to the EU “Stop the Clock” Directive by postponing reporting obligations for Wave 2 and Wave 3 companies. Wave 2 CSRD reporting requirements are delayed to the 2027 financial year (reporting in 2028) with thresholds narrowed to large undertakings with more than 1,000 employees and over €450 million in net annual turnover. The original Wave 3 companies under the CSRD was all listed small and medium sized enterprises (these companies have now been taken out of mandatory scope under the Omnibus I Directive) while the Omnibus I reforms were being negotiated.

Under the Omnibus I Directive fewer metrics are required with a reduction in mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) data points.

The next step is domestic implementation of Directive (EU) 2026/470, the Omnibus I Directive, insofar as it amends the CSRD. The Directive entered into force on 18 March 2026, and Member States must transpose the CSRD-related amendments by 19 March 2027.

The Omnibus Proposals have significantly reduced the number of companies required to report on sustainability measures and the range of indicators to report on.

Voluntary Reporting on Sustainability

Some enterprises may see value in voluntarily publicly reporting on sustainability related matters, irrespective of the legal requirement. Accordingly, entities now outside the mandatory scope of CSRD can choose to report voluntarily using the Voluntary Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME) or an alternative framework for voluntary reporting. The VSME is a simplified standard developed by the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), an organisation that advises the European Commission on financial and sustainability reporting standards, in response to the SME Relief Package published by the European Commission in September 2023.

With the CSRD scope now narrowed, many Irish companies now sit outside mandatory EU sustainability reporting, but the sustainability information and data demands from larger customers and finance providers may still remain. Where a larger undertaking that is subject to mandatory CSRD reporting seeks sustainability information from an SME in its value chain, it is not entitled to request information going beyond what the VSME standard requires. Voluntary sustainability reporting may become increasingly relevant, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).