Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise, as I was in the Chamber for the start of the first presentation. I have a few basic questions.

First, how much freedom of manoeuvre does either an individual member state or the EU as a whole have in this respect? I understand from having listened to Dr. Saheb that the EU is trying to make proposals but they have been rejected. In practical terms, is unanimity required to replace this agreement with another?

Second, I wish to understand the exact nature of the protection. I know that modern protections in investor disputes protect a foreign investor from rules that are not being applied to domestic investors, but in the case of climate action, we would be applying the same regulations to all investors. That would be our ambition. Is that distinction of discriminatory rules not part of this agreement such that, even if our national fossil fuel companies are having to change their practices, the others can get damages for either damage or lost profits?

Does this existing treaty anticipate anything like force majeure, which is really what is happening here in that complete transformation is necessary? No treaty, you would think, would give away the ability to respond to an existential crisis of this nature. Has this one been particularly badly drawn?

Finally, emissions trading forces coal generators, for example, to pay much higher carbon taxes than gas or renewable generators. Has that already triggered a series of claims by the fossil fuel industry against the emissions trading system, ETS? It seems that almost everything the EU is doing and has been doing for many years could potentially be portrayed as inflicting either damage or a lost expectation of profits in respect of coal producers, for example.