Professor John Sweeney:

Briefly, I would love to know what the negotiating position going into COP25 will be. The committee should certainly ask that of the Department in the next round. There is a perception that Ireland in the past has sheltered behind intransigent countries such as Poland and some of the other east European countries. In the early days of COP when I used to go to the meetings EU spoke with one voice. There were breakfast meetings to sort out where the EU would go with a particular platform and position. It was quite encouraging to see the EU taking leadership of the climate issues at those meetings. In the last few COPs I have been to the EU has been paralysed by cattle and cars. I have seen Commissioner Cañete cutting a rather sad figure because he went into that meeting looking for increased ambition. He has not got it from the EU members and he does not seem to have got it from Ireland. That would be something to flesh out, just where Ireland's position is on this because we will suffer reputational damage if we do not come out and say we want to be leaders, this is what we are going to do and we will support increased ambition. If we are going to hide behind other countries that would be very detrimental.

In terms of capping domestic mitigation the UK has already scrapped some of the credits that it had, the hot air it had stored. That would be a good signal to the rest of the world that Ireland is serious about this. Ireland has already bought carbon credits many years ago. They are still in the bank. They could be scrapped at this stage. We spent €70 million buying hot air at the time of the Celtic tiger. I hope we are not going to use those down the road. It is time to do our own thing on mitigation and not seek the back door out of buying carbon credits. That is the wrong way to go.