CSR Stakeholder Forum on the National Action Plan for CSR (March update)
In April 2014 The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mr. Richard Bruton T.D launched “Good for Business, Good for the Community”, Ireland’s National Plan on Corporate Social Responsibility 2014-2016. One of the Government’s key objectives is to make Ireland the best small country in which to do business.
The National Plan on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) supports this objective and articulates a vision for Ireland to be recognised as a Centre of Excellence for responsible and sustainable business practices. Among the measures contained in the plan are:
- Establish a Stakeholder Forum on CSR to support the development of CSR in Ireland, in the first half of 2014
- Establish a baseline of CSR activity in Ireland, through the National Standards Association of Ireland
- Work with stakeholders to raise awareness of CSR and support best practice CSR
- Explore how IDA and Enterprise Ireland can promote CSR with their client companies
- Support programmes to develop CSR in the SME sector
As a key part of the Stakeholder Forum on CSR, Business in the Community Ireland last week attended the first Forum meeting of 2015.
BITCI presented the newly launched service dedicated to SMEs: Responsible Business for SMEs www.rbsmes.ie . It was highlighted that SMEs’ engagement is critical to achieving the objective of making Ireland the most responsible country to do business and challenges and plans were discussed in how to achieve this. The need to provide business case studies was identified and BITCI hopes to address this by providing regular case studies demonstrating the business benefits of being a responsible and sustainable business.
Presentations were delivered by chairs of the four sub-groups on priority actions. A new online portal dedicated to CSR and areas for collaborative action were discussed. Finally, Business to Arts the membership-based not for profit organisation that develops partnerships between businesses, individuals and the arts gave a presentation on their sector and key trends.
The next Stakeholder Forum meeting will take place in June.
For any queries on this topic please contact Bernadette Phelan bphelan@bitc.ie
