Dr. Chris O'Connell:

We need a green transition and we need it urgently. We need to get off fossil fuels. That much is clear. The problem is that we have a system that prioritises profit and environmental abuses over human rights. We have corporate impunity and no accountability systems. Therefore, shifting from carbon intensive extractive activities to less carbon intensive extractive activities but within the same system is not going to address the sorts of abuses that we have been talking about today. We are going to continue with the breaches of human rights, criminalisation and attacks on defenders because that system is going to continue. That is why with the treaty and other legislation - the Deputy mentioned the EU and it is now rolling back on its due diligence legislation - we need to change that system. As Ms Díaz referenced in her opening statement, in the European Parliament this week, if we do not have a system that values the Earth and human beings above all else, we are always going to back in this situation. It will just change from which mineral or which fuel, etc. However, for those on the ground they experience it as a continuation, not a transition. That is important.

On what Ireland can do, there are some suggestions in the briefing. We have tried to make clear that there is space and scope for Ireland to be a champion. Other EU member states have stepped up on this issue. Ireland can and should do the same. We should begin by developing a clear position on the treaty; there has not been one. We are broadly saying positive things without any specific referring back to the EU, but the EU's leadership on this is highly questionable given what is going on there at the moment.

That is a first step. Coming to the session at the beginning of next week, staying for the week and contributing would be positive signs. It may not have binding force in terms of being a textual proposal but the message it would send to the global south, to the communities like those represented here, would more than make up for the lack of legal enforceability of those proposals. I propose those two things as a starting point. We call upon this committee and its members to write to an Tánaiste and Minister for foreign affairs and call on Ireland to put this into place, establish a clear political position on the treaty and demonstrate outwardly that this is something that matters to Ireland.