Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I again apologise for the conflict I had. I have two or three questions for the witnesses. They can feel free to indicate if they have been answered at length in one of the sections I missed when I was disconnected. I am interested in what Dr. Saheb says about the compensation piece because this was a very strong narrative coming from COP 26, whereby there is a very hard line being held in terms of compensation for loss and damage to the global south, but many of the major extractive and fossil fuel corporations seemed to anticipate the pay-outs they would get, either as subsidies for their new branches if they get into renewable energy, or as compensation for the price of states' exiting.

I will not go deeper into the philosophy of it, but I heard an interesting analogy with the exit from slavery. We had this phenomenon where it was described as a major system change in the economy based on an extractive exploitative model on which a lot of economic activity is based and transitioning away from it involved massive compensation to the slave owners even up until the 1990s. That became a huge economic drain on states as some of them are still paying for it. It certainly was the case up to the 1990s in the UK. There was huge resistance to reparation for slavery. I use this not because of the historically interesting fact but because it is an example we need to learn from. We are making a massive system change. This is not the normal run of course of business. I would like the views of the witnesses on when we are making a system change such as that, what is the extent to which baggage such as these treaties affect it? I want to focus on developing countries in particular. If Europe were to have a co-ordinated exit from the Energy Charter Treaty, which is being advocated for strongly by many, what would be the potential implications for developing countries? We know at the moment there is talk of a co-ordinated exit. There is a discussion among countries in the EU of us holding environmental standards higher, but it is still a fact that European companies may take actions against governments in developing countries.