Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We will pay less if we can de-risk it. The more we can give certainty around the policy approach, the lower the risk and the lower the cost of capital. The key objective is bringing that down.

I want to move on, because the one part of the Senator's question that I particularly want to address is the loss and damage issue. It was central to the negotiations in Glasgow. Going back to what I said earlier, I believe we have a good story to tell, because firstly, we are already meeting the target which was agreed in Glasgow that half of our climate finance should be spent on adaptation. Also, the real strength we have is that our climate finance is not tied. It is grant-based, not loan-based, so we have a really good story to tell. We committed to increase it by 140% over the next five years.

On the issue of loss and damage, coming out of Glasgow, it was agreed that a dialogue would have to start. One of the proposals I made, within the negotiations, is that Ireland would be willing to support and help developing countries in hosting such a dialogue to enable us to address the issue in a real and meaningful way. It was critical that the wording around that was clarified. We started off with wording around whether we would have a workshop. The developing countries rightly said that was not good enough. What I and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, who was also in Glasgow, said was that we would step up and use our resources to help such a dialogue to deliver a programme of loss and damage supports.

Beyond that, there is also the Santiago Network, which came out of a previous COP, to start delivering on some of the loss and damage issues. In Glasgow, we committed an additional €5 million, along with Germany, Denmark and Luxembourg, to allow the operation of that network to deliver on loss and damage commitments. It is not easy. Other countries that were party to the negotiations that I was privileged to be involved in are very reluctant and feel that the commitments breach their political red lines. However, in respect of the role of Ireland in this, I think the nature and quality of our aid programme, our development aid work and our connections to developing countries places us well to try to advance the understanding of what the needs are and how to deliver support for loss and damage and adaptation. They are very much connected in the developing world. We agreed that we will come back to the COP in Egypt next year with a very real programme of work done. I offered Ireland's support in delivering on that work for the next COP presidency and for the overall UN process. That is not insignificant in getting global agreement on where we need to go.