Dr. Lorna Gold:

I will deal with some of the questions on climate change. The committee has already had a full briefing from Professor Sweeney, who is probably the most eminent expert in this field, and I will not pretend to have his level of knowledge in this area. Deputy O'Reilly commented that the recent flooding is making everyone realise that climate change is here and with us. The World Economic Forum does an annual assessment of global risk. Climate change has jumped into the top three of the greatest likelihood of risk in the next year and into the top five highest concerns in terms of global risk next year. It is right up there now.

The impact of climate change on the countries we work in is already devastating. This is particularly the case this year given the effect of climate change combining with the abnormal El Niñoeffect. It is not possible to separate them out. We are looking at a combination of once in a century storms and droughts that now extend across the entire east coast of Africa from the very north horn all the way down to South Africa. The intensity of these weather events will play out in the coming year.

From an EU perspective, it is now time to get down to brass tacks. The achievement in Paris was significant. I was there for the summit and it was not necessarily always going to end with a happy story on the last day. It was very close to the wire, in particular in the final stages of the negotiations. It is a huge credit to the French and all the leaders who attended that they managed to achieve an ambitious, binding and equitable deal. The real issue now, however, especially with the EU, comes to the effort sharing agreement, which has been alluded to, and how the effort sharing will be divided up among EU member states. We must remember that post-2020, no country can increase emissions and they will have to be within the range of zero growth and 40% reductions on 2005 levels. As this committee knows, we will also be looking at possible fines within the region of hundreds of millions of euro to billions of euro, as agreed in the Council conclusions.

We believe it untenable for Ireland to continue to argue it is a special case on account of its agricultural production. This strategy, which was evident in the Taoiseach's comments during the Paris summit, is damaging in terms of Ireland's international standing as a good EU citizen and incoherent with its other policy objectives, be they its development objectives or sustainable development goals. We argue that this needs to be urgently rethought and other issues need to be taken into account when Ireland makes its case on the European burden sharing agreement.

One of the points raised was that focusing on agriculture as the bogeyman is unhelpful. I wholeheartedly agree with that. It seems to be exactly what the Government has done in its negotiations at EU level. The focus is entirely on the agricultural sector and does not take into account that our climate mitigation objectives have to take account of our entire economic output and that measures can be taken in other sectors to reduce our emissions.

On Ireland's emissions, I remind the committee we are one of only four member states not currently meeting our 2020 commitments under our EU obligations. The EPA has projected our emissions will rise by 7% by 2030. Trócaire, like other NGOs, has not been calling for a reduction in agricultural production but has been questioning the planned doubling of the herd size under Food Wise 2025, which will make it virtually impossible to meet our obligations under the Paris agreement.

When Ban Ki-moon was here last May, he made the point that if a country wants to be a leader on hunger - as Ireland has stated it wants to be in terms of the sustainable development goals which are our real focus - it has to also be a leader on climate change. Climate change is the single biggest issue driving food insecurity and reducing food yields worldwide. It is an issue of policy coherence.

There was a point made about the images used by NGOs. Dóchas has a code of conduct on images to which all member NGOs sign up. A peer review mechanism ensures that we do not project images that are not respectful of human rights and dignity. Deputy Byrne will be glad to hear that the images that will be used in Trócaire's Lenten campaign in the coming weeks will be images of Irish people and will focus on the ways that Irish people engage in solidarity overseas rather than focusing on the image of poverty overseas. That has been part of a dialogue we have engaged in with representatives of African and other countries over the past number of years.

I will hand back to Mr. Sheehan.