Business in Ireland 2023 – Environmental, Social, Governance of Enterprises

Statistician's Comment

Commenting on the release, James Hegarty, Statistician in the Sustainability and Circular Economy Division, said:

"Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) information helps investors and other stakeholders to assess the impact of the enterprise economy on people and the environment. It also helps enterprises to evaluate risks and opportunities arising from climate change and other sustainability issues. Whether it is considering the transition to a low carbon economy or a more diverse workforce, shareholders and the wider community are increasingly looking beyond financial performance when assessing business performance.

This release leverages existing data sources to highlight high level ESG metrics and contains two chapters. The first chapter focuses on environmental matters and the second chapter contains social and governance related data.

Emissions and Workforce Data

While Irish enterprises are making progress in terms of increasing the use of clean energy, with a 7% rise in the use of electricity in 2023, there is further progress to be made in reducing the use of fossil fuels to lessen environmental emissions. In 2023, transport fuels, solid fuels and petroleum fuels accounted for 54% of business energy use. There is a significant journey to go to meet Ireland's emissions reduction targets. Final 2023 emissions data, released by the Environmental Protection Agency in March 2025 shows that greenhouse gas emissions were 10.3% lower than in 2018, with a distance still to travel to the National Climate Ambition of a 51% reduction from the 2018 figure by 2030.

In terms of the workforce, overall employment continues to increase, rising by 416,000 people (18.2%) between Quarter 4 2018 and Quarter 4 2023. There remains gender related pay differentials and a gap in female representation at senior executive level; with females accounting for 30% of the top 10% of employee earnings and 32% of senior executives in 2023."

Editor's Note

On 05 July 2024, 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.

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. The Omnibus Proposals include proposals to amend the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (Directive 2022/2464/EU).

If implemented, the Omnibus Proposals, will significantly reduce the number of companies that will be required to report on sustainability measures and the range of indicators to report on. The European Commission estimate that the number of companies covered by the new rules will fall by around 80%.

It remains to seen, over time, if this legal landscape stays fixed. What seems clear though is that the ‘science has not changed' and enterprises will be expected to play their part in terms of sustainability, for the following reasons:

• The White Paper on Enterprises places an emphasis on the policy goal of decarbonisation. The climate action legal obligations on Ireland remain and sectors, including enterprises, are likely to be expected to play their part.
• Enterprises who wish to highlight their ‘green credentials’, for market share or other reasons, will need evidence to support their claims
• The risks to enterprises from a changing climate are present, and enterprises in their risk management frameworks may be noting these and actioning them – both the risks to their operations from the physical climate changing and the risks to enterprise reputation from not engaging sufficiently on sustainability matters.

The CSO will continue to monitor ongoing regulatory developments while also continuing to develop its ESG outputs by focusing on enterprise sustainability and emissions reduction targets.