Ms Cliona Sharkey:

I express thanks on behalf of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition for the invitation to contribute to the session. Stop Climate Chaos has a set of policy recommendations submitted to the Department during the public consultation on the national mitigation plan and the Citizens' Assembly. We believe, if implemented, these will go a significant way to getting Ireland on track to meeting its own climate action targets, as well as its increasing EU and global climate action mitigation. Today, we will focus our contribution on governance and the crucial role this committee can play in the establishment of an effective policy and accountability cycle for climate action in Ireland.

Weather events across the globe and at home in recent years have seen an increased awareness within Ireland of the reality of climate change and the need for action. We are starting to witness the more visible impacts but in other parts of the world, already increasingly frequent and intense weather events are devastating lives and livelihoods in the poorest countries that have contributed least to the problem and have the fewest resources to cope.

In east Africa today, more than 20 million people are continuing to struggle with persistent drought, and that is with today's level of warming.

Ireland has a proud, long-standing track record for its overseas aid programme. This is a critical contributor to our global reputation. However, it is significantly undermined by our continued poor performance on climate action.

It is important also to recognise that climate change poses more than environmental risks but systemic risks in the context of the failure to curb it in time to deliver on the Paris Agreement. Beyond direct impacts in Ireland, we must be cognisant of spill-over effects of impacts elsewhere in the world, and on European countries, in regard to trade and infrastructure, transport, security and finance, as highlighted by the European Environmental Agency. The risks posed by climate change to the financial system are twofold; the economic and financial implications of the direct physical impacts of climate change, such as the clean-up costs of more frequent and intense disasters, and the risks of failing to curb emissions in a timely manner leading to the prospect of a late, abrupt transition with significant systemic, financial, economic, social and political impacts. That is not some kind of case analysis; these are risks highlighted by an advisory committee to the European Systemic Risk Board, and it has been highlighted publically and repeatedly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Dr. Mark Carney.

The Paris Agreement adopted in 2015 was a major milestone. However, we must be clear that it is not a solution but a call to action. In Paris in 2015, all states recognised the need to increase their action prior to 2020. Furthermore, at its centre, the Paris Agreement contains a ratchet mechanism under which states must submit and report on their ever-increasing emission reductions commitments and actions, beginning in 2020. This is not an externally imposed agenda. The Paris Agreement ratchet mechanism is a recognition at the highest levels of Government, based on the Government-endorsed science, of the fact that there is only one feasible direction of travel, and we must speed up significantly and consistently in our collective interests. Ireland’s support for the weakest or least stringent provisions in EU legislation serves not only to hinder Irish action but EU action as a whole, undermining the progress of all 28 member states to the key goals of the Paris Agreement.