Mr. Niall McLoughlin:

What we have dealt with to date is emerging, minimising and then the final piece in the jigsaw is addressing. In the context of Ireland's profile, we have been one of the early movers on this. Last year, at COP26, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, announced new funding to operate the Santiago Network, which is a loss and damage facility that catalyses the deployment of expertise, etc., to regions facing this crisis. We are an early mover, and our entire aid profile and the way it is underpinned by humanitarian instincts in the first place speaks to the fact that loss and damage is an issue and is recognised as such.

Officially, perhaps for the first time, we saw conclusions emerge from the Environment Council yesterday. There was recognition that loss and damage needs to be on the agenda and recognition that these losses are real and need to be addressed. How they are going to be addressed is the subject of very difficult discussions at Sharm el-Sheikh. The discussion that we have been having entirely as part of the EU working group preparing for COP27, where a number of different approaches to the issue have been advocated. Ireland has experts in the various expert groups feeding in possible options with respect to approaches that can be taken to loss and damage in the context of the Glasgow dialogue, which was really necessary to create the space for discussions on how funding can be channelled to those in the greatest need.

The Deputy mentioned some backsliding in the context of finance. Ireland's total climate finance for 2020 was €88 million. For 2021, indicative figures confirm an increase. These figures are submitted to the European Commission reporting system. They are not yet publicly available. They could be subject to minor changes. It is important to note there was a change in the methodology for counting and reporting Ireland's international climate finance which has taken effect since the publication of the 2019 report. It is in line with the EU regulation of the governance of the Energy Union and climate action which came into force in 2020. According to the previous methodology there Ireland's total climate finance would have been nearly €92 million in 2020. There are underlying factors. Applying the new methodology, Ireland's climate finance is approximately €88 million which represented a reduction of about €5.7 million. The decrease is mostly explained by the impact of Covid-19 in 2020 on programming and the delivery of planned activities. The changed methodology had the largest impact on the Department of Foreign Affairs climate finance spend due to the nature of real marking across bilateral NGO programming. There was a technical aspect there and our commitment to providing appropriate levels of climate finance was really crystalised by the Taoiseach's announcement at COP last year, which guarantees €225 million by 2025.

On energy, the entire crisis has represented an opportunity to engage the public on how we have approached energy previously and how we have over-used. There is a national campaign, Reduce Your Use, ongoing to get that message across. There is an opportunity to try to engage the public now while more than ever everyone is considering the costs associated with their consumption. Every opportunity we have to engage the public on this and more broadly on climate is very welcome. We will try to use those opportunities as best we can over the coming weeks.