David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome everybody to the meeting. It is a pity they have to come in repeatedly but this is the world we live in and this is where we are at. I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I do not want to repeat what my colleagues said. I think we are all more or less in agreement that there is a desperate situation as we speak, which is accelerating quite quickly and maybe more quickly than people realise. Obviously, as was said earlier, the situation in Ukraine is not helping at all. That was alluded to last week as well. We have seen more and more people moving. The movement of people north and so on from these areas is another catastrophe in its own right. People have to leave their homes and homelands and travel long distances, very often through very dangerous territory. We know the dangers, pitfalls and horrors that can befall people in that regard.

One particular line stood out in Ms McKenna's submission. She stated that "Less than 2% of climate finance actually reaches small holder farmers, many of whom are women, on the ground globally." She might expand on that and talk about the other 98% at some stage. I would be interested to hear how that happens. There is a worry when people give that funding that it does not get to where they want it to go. What can we do to ensure that money gets where we want it to go and has the greatest impact? We have corruption and climate in conflict. We mentioned climate in conflict but corruption is also involved at all levels. Ms McKenna might talk about that.

I also want to ask about two other funds, namely, the least developed countries fund and special climate change fund. How are they are performing at the moment? What is the actual interaction between them and the current loss and damage fund we are talking about? There seem to be a lot of funds.

I asked a number of people recently whether they knew anything about COP 27 and they did not. We seem to hide behind the Conference of the Parties, COP, although I am not sure if it is intentional. People even have to look further to see what parties are being referred to. It is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and all these things. It is very hard and complex in some ways. Maybe we should look at calling a spade a spade and say it is climate change. Many people do not know what COP is. We do because we hear about it. I wonder how many of our colleagues in the Oireachtas would even know what COP was if they were not tuned in. I am concerned about raising awareness. That is quite important among everybody everywhere right across the world.

Last week, we had a group here visiting from Finland. They have an interesting committee in the Parliament there called the Committee for the Future, which looks into the future and predicts what is going to happen. I have been reading some work by Mr. John Englander, who published a book in 2021 called Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward. It is actually quite frightening because he talks about rising sea levels and the impact that will have. He said it is inevitable; it is unrelenting and cannot be stopped. That will have an impact around the coastlines of the world in Africa, North America, South America, here in Europe and so on. He said we should be talking about the sea level rising by metres, not inches, and that it was going to happen. Therefore, perhaps we need to start looking at that. I know we need to deal with the here and now and the catastrophe that is out there right now, but maybe we should start looking ahead at this next catastrophe that is on the way. There has been little discussion about it. I did not hear any discussion about it here, at the Conference of the Parties or anywhere else. However, much of the stuff I have been reading is quite scary and frightening if this in fact happens, which they say is inevitable with the ice melting. In some instances when the ice melts, it rises up and takes the weight off the land and the land rises as well. That only happens in a very small number of places, however. Ms McKenna might comment on that.

I am interested in particular on the small island developing states. I met some of those people in the UN a number of years ago. They were very worried. Some said recently that their country was going to disappear under the sea and they would have to leave. I am not taking from what is happening in other parts of the world either with terrible storms, awful drought, crops failing, rains failing and so on. It is all part of the same issue. Mr. Englander said this is inevitable and we have to accept it and mitigate it by moving to higher ground, which is the title of his book. It sounds really scary and catastrophic in many ways. Those are just some thoughts. I do not want to repeat what other colleagues said earlier about other things. The accountability is one issue in which I am interested.