Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I am grateful for the invitation, which is timely, and to talk about coming back when we know more about the outcomes is also very welcome. I will respond to Deputy Maureen O’Sullivan’s question about Ireland’s role and how to counter the power of the fossil fuel industry in the upcoming policies. I will leave the question about Ethiopia to my development colleagues and others will touch on the population question. I will also speak about opportunities because it is not all sacrifice.

I spent ten years in the overseas aid and development community before my ten years with Friends of the Earth and have studied Ireland’s role from both sides of that coalition. I was conscious when I moved to Friends of the Earth of Ireland’s proud record on overseas aid. At the time, in 2005, before the recession, we were the sixth most generous country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, development assistance committee, DAC, per capita, in overseas aid contributions. We were just below the top five club who were at the 0.7% of gross national income level. When I came to this job I made a calculation that no one in Ireland had made before and discovered that in the same peer group we were the sixth most climate polluting country per capita. It seemed unreconcilable over time, otherwise we would be giving with one hand and taking with the other. Recently, I returned to those figures because I knew that we had essentially met our Kyoto targets, through the impact of the recession more than policy. We have dropped in aid to eighth place in the OECD DAC per capitaand because our emissions have fallen we are now eighth in the peer group for climate-changing pollution emissions per capita. There is not much of an improvement. In terms of objective reality Ireland still has this - "schizophrenia" was mentioned earlier but that may be too strong - contradiction in its approach to, and policy on, climate change. We have not squared that circle yet and the mitigation plan that is hopefully coming out next year has to do that.

I have a fear about our approach to climate diplomacy, which is relevant to this committee. We have a particular emissions profile where agriculture plays a large role, more so than in other European countries. For years, Ireland considered that and other issues such as peat and coal and Moneypoint and so on. We have looked for ways to bring down emissions and had plans to do it, unlike now when we have no plan. I am fearful of our approach now, watching how this Government has acted in recent years although it is about to bring a climate change Bill over the line. This is the fourth environment Minister I have watched make this effort. It will happen before the Paris meeting, which is good and significant, but it will be just a framework and will not include measures for dealing with emissions.

We have watched the real concerted effort across Departments, which we had hoped would focus on actual solutions, but instead aims at a diplomatic effort to get Ireland off the hook of its 2020 targets under the EU, which are being renounced because they came from the last Government as if they were somehow wrongly calculated and an effort to obtain easier targets for 2030. This comes across as Irish exceptionalism, as in "We are special and different and should not have to make the same effort as everybody else". We would state that this comes across as saying we should not have to do our fair share. A lay person hearing the messages from the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Taoiseach, who have intervened in this debate, would say that it sounds like Ireland should not act and the current targets are not good for us. The Taoiseach has spoken at European level about Ireland's being screwed if the targets set for 2030 are proportionately the same as those for 2020 and that this would be catastrophic for the Irish economy.

Normally we hear such words about climate change when talking about its impact. The overall targets for Europe are not adequate to the science. Therefore, when one country is speaking about its targets as being catastrophic, the message to its people and to Europe is that it does not want to act in a way which is commensurate with the issue.

We have particular challenges but everyone has particular challenges. The Germans could say - well, they could have said - Germany produces the best, most climate efficient cars in the world so if the Chinese middle class wants new cars it should buy German cars. We are saying the same about beef and dairy products. Of course, food is different, and we can discuss it in more detail, but this approach comes across as seeking not to act. The risk is that if every country adopts this approach, we will not get anywhere near a deal commensurate with the challenge.

This approach is an issue for us because it is an inappropriate way of going about climate diplomacy. It is also ineffective from a strategic game theory perspective. Ireland is not getting the traction it hoped it would get at an EU level. Huge efforts went into getting particular wording in the European Council conclusions last October. It was trumpeted by Ireland as a success because it did two things. It gave special recognition to land use and agriculture, which would pan out in how the European target was applied to different countries. It also recognised, in obtuse language, that it would look again at each individual country's target based on its GDP. Our GDP is higher than our GNP. The question was, therefore, what is our real capacity to act. These were taken by the Government as two very significant moves by the EU. Now our understanding is that it is not clear that those rhetorical assurances are panning out in real policy changes as Europe gears up next year to adopt national targets under whatever comes out of the upcoming meeting in Paris.

One analogy is the concession we got at the European Council level with regard to the recapitalisation of the banks and breaking the link between sovereign debt and bank debt, which was trumpeted at the time. It is much more difficult in practice to get it applied. In that case it was, exceptionally, retrospective as well. In this case, the concession would be prospective. However, applying a special treatment to one country opens a can of worms for the Commission and the European Council. Our understanding is that there is a significant push back. Officials inside government are now worried that because we are not meeting our 2020 target and not on track to meet it, we are facing potential non-compliance costs, namely, fines or costs for buying credits overseas. These costs could run into multi-billions of euro over the course of the decade from 2020 to 2030. This is not just for farm emissions but transport emissions as well because we have not broken the link between economic activity and emissions.

There is also a push-back from the European Commission because Ireland's approach has been quite confrontational. We are saying we are different, the last targets were unfair and that we should not have targets which are commensurately proportionate for 2030. The approach has been quite pushy. While it achieved some traction rhetorically, there is now a push-back in practice. I fear an analogy can be drawn between this and how Ireland dealt with the troika versus how Syriza dealt with the troika. Ireland seems to be ignoring its own lessons. In the case of the troika, Ireland complied but then asked for changes along the way and got them. The argument would be that significant gains were made. Syriza rejected on principle the way it was being done and, as we know, faced an even stiffer challenge. Ireland's approach to climate change at the European level is much more like Syriza's approach to the troika than that of Ireland. I worry that our climate diplomacy is not and will not be effective and will come back to bite us. The calculations of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Finance suggest the approach runs significant financial risk.

Our analysis is that Ireland is not even trying to meet its 2020 targets. The narrative is, "we said they were too high and too difficult and we cannot meet them". The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government recently said that we cannot meet our 2020 targets, even though, as an NGO, we do not think the targets are particularly high. Therefore, the attitude adopted is not "we must try harder" but rather "we should be given easier targets for 2030". With regard to climate justice, our overseas reputation and our effort in the sustainable development goals and so on in terms of coherence, it would be much more appropriate and effective if we were being seen to act as much as possible on transport, retrofitting our houses, farming and energy. There has been some movement in the area of energy at least. If we were seen to be as effective as possible in such areas, then when we say we have a particular challenge in agriculture and are different, we would get a much more sympathetic hearing and a much fairer, more realistic, more practical and proportionate deal in Europe on our climate actions.