41% of Irish Boards Have No Formal ESG Governance. 15% Have No Plans to Get One.

Categories: Corporate Governance, Uncategorised

Here’s Why That Should Concern Every Business Owner in Cork & Kerry.

Here’s what we are seeing. When most business owners in Kerry or Cork hear the phrase “ESG governance,” their eyes glaze over. They picture a multinational with a sustainability department, a glossy annual report, and a team of consultants charging by the hour to tell them to plant trees.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. And while the acronym might sound like it belongs in a Brussels boardroom, the obligations it creates are quietly making their way into the day-to-day reality of Irish SMEs — whether you’re ready for them or not.

What the Research Actually Says

The Corporate Governance Institute’s Boardroom Resilience 2026 report surveyed 500 board directors and C-suite executives across the UK and Ireland. The findings are striking.

“Whilst 83% of surveyed directors express confidence in their company’s overall ESG performance, when prompted to score more granularly, only 38% expressed high confidence.”

That gap — between how confident boards feel and how prepared they actually are — is something I see regularly in practice. It’s not dishonesty. It’s a blind spot. And blind spots are expensive.

The report goes further:

41% of boards currently lack a formal approach to ESG governance oversight
15% have no plans to put one in place
Only 30% of boards have carried out any formal ESG training
Just 33% reported social responsibility and CSR expertise across their board

These aren’t figures from struggling organisations. These are senior leaders in financial services, healthcare, legal and education — sectors where governance is supposed to be front and centre.

So Why Does This Matter to a Business in Kerry or Cork?

Here’s where it gets practical.

Funding. If you’re looking for investment, a bank loan, or any form of EU-backed funding in the next two to three years, you will increasingly be asked to demonstrate your ESG position. Lenders and investors are applying ESG criteria further down the supply chain. If you can’t show a documented approach, you may simply not qualify.

Customers and contracts. Larger companies — the ones you may be supplying or tendering to — are under their own ESG reporting obligations. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is already applying to large companies and is filtering down to their supply chains. If you’re a supplier to a business that has to report on its ESG footprint, your practices become part of their story.

Regulation. The direction of travel from Europe is clear. What starts as a reporting requirement for large corporates becomes a compliance expectation for everyone else within a few years. We’ve seen it with GDPR. We’ll see it with ESG.

Reputation. Closer to home, customers, employees and communities are paying more attention to how businesses operate. A business that can articulate its values — how it treats its people, how it manages its environmental impact, how it governs itself — has a genuine competitive advantage. One that can’t is increasingly exposed.

The Governance Piece Is the One Most People Miss

Of the three letters in ESG, the G — Governance — is the one I focus on most with clients. And it’s the one that underpins everything else.

Good governance means having documented oversight. It means your board or leadership team has a clear, recorded position on how the business is run, how decisions are made, and how risks are managed. Without that foundation, the E and the S are just good intentions.

As the TCGI report puts it:

“Board optimism in the strategic value of ESG may not be supported with the requisite expertise.”

That’s a polite way of saying: a lot of boards think they’re doing fine on ESG because nobody has asked them the hard questions yet.

What a Documented ESG Position Actually Looks Like for an SME

It doesn’t have to be complicated. For most businesses I work with in Kerry and Cork, it starts with three honest questions:

Environmental — Do we have a documented position on our environmental impact? Even something as straightforward as a waste management policy, a fleet emissions policy, or an energy usage review?
Social — Do we have clear, written policies on how we treat our people? Diversity, wellbeing, fair pay, community engagement?
Governance — Do we have documented oversight structures? Board or leadership accountability, risk management, compliance records, decision-making processes?

If you can answer yes to all three with a piece of paper to back it up, you’re ahead of 41% of Irish boards.

If you can’t — that’s not a crisis. It’s a starting point.

The Bottom Line

ESG governance is no longer a nice-to-have for large organisations. It is becoming a baseline expectation for any business that wants to access funding, win contracts, attract talent, and operate with confidence in an increasingly regulated environment.

The businesses that get ahead of this now — that take the time to document their position, train their leadership, and build a governance framework that reflects how they actually operate — will be in a significantly stronger position in two to three years’ time.

The ones that wait until it becomes a requirement will be playing catch-up. And catch-up is always more expensive.

Does your board have a documented ESG position?

If you’re not sure, or if you’d like a straightforward conversation about where your business stands, I’m happy to talk. A 20-minute call is usually enough to tell you whether you have a gap — and how significant it is.

Pat Sheehan | Corporate Governance | Orbitus | Kerry & Cork

Author

Pat Sheehan

Solicitor and Head of Corporate Governance

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