Professor John Sweeney:

The Deputy will remember that I mentioned the large attendance at COP meetings. It is fair to stay that perhaps 30% of attendees are trying to gain the system. There is a large market emerging in respect of how we handle sequestration and credits. The reason the rulebook was not finalised in Katowice and now has to go to COP25 is that Brazil, in particular, wanted to double-count some of its forest resources. There is an attempt to carry over the clean development mechanism credits that countries earned under Kyoto and have that basket of hot air put in the bank so they can then access them at a later stage as a way of getting around the system for further mitigation.

Article 6 is a labyrinth of legislation and regulation. One would need a degree solely in Article 6 to fully understand it. Ireland should support the Commission completely in the sense that it should not enable countries to have a carryover of credits that will later compromise our ability to achieve the necessary mitigation reductions. That is an important point because the creative accountants are multiplying furiously with a view to determining how to count sequestration and carry over credits from previous periods. All of that is to the detriment of tackling the problem at source, which is mitigation. We will see another wrangle in Madrid in four weeks over Article 6. It would be nice to say it will be settled but I have a feeling it will continue to run.