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

Yes, to legislate.

To answer the question, the best regulatory approach is through a good regulatory system that is independent, which we have with the CRU. That is what is going to be delivered next month. We will not solve climate change by setting up barriers to people meeting, talking or thinking about best practice as to how we make this change. That is something I absolutely want to see happen.

I am very confident that we will meet what we were asked to do under the UN process, namely double our climate finance support. We will do that by delivering our €225 million commitment. It is a matter of pride for Ireland that this is largely directed towards climate adaptation, which the poorest countries rightly say is the area that tends to be forgotten. As a country, we have a proud record because we do not tend to tie it to trade or any motive other than delivering climate justice for the poorest countries in the world.

I will be going to New York next week. In the meetings I will be attending, I expect that this matter will be centre stage in advance of the further climate negotiations in Baku in November. We are in a very perilous place in terms of getting the scale of the investment we need. As the IEA assessed earlier this year, we need something like €4.5 trillion a year in climate action investment. On the international stage, I have, in our submissions, championed the fact that the real focus of the IEA should be on the €1.5 trillion that needs to go to the developing countries that are completely excluded from the capital markets at the moment. We will play our role in trying to change the international financial system and move it towards this more sustainable direction.

In what we are doing in not just the volume of the aid but the quality of how we deliver it, Ireland can speak authoritatively. You are never perfect-----