Ms Sharon Finegan:

In response to Senator Pauline O'Reilly's point about geographic injustice, there is a chapter in the climate action plan about Ireland's international action on climate breakdown. Some fairly significant steps forward have been made. There are a relatively small number of actions on this in the climate action plan. There are things around seeking to double the percentage of overseas development aid spending on climate finance by 2030. We are well on track to do that. Other actions include placing climate action, particularly for least developed countries and small island developing states, at the heart of development co-operation and policy partnerships and engaging in multilateral processes. There are real opportunities in the next iteration of the plan to look more carefully at this and think carefully about it.

Regarding the intergenerational point, there is a commitment in the programme for Government to look at the climate dialogue process. Bringing in young people as part of that will be hugely important. My Department recently did some work to make our online presence a little more accessible. There is a new section on climate action on gov.iewhere we have been trying to make information as accessible as possible. One of the things we have done is engage with Comhairle na nÓg to get its assistance in making some of our material more accessible and developing a jargon buster. A lot of the time, the information policymakers use to talk about climate is very inaccessible so we are trying to draw them into the conversation. We are at an advanced stage of that work. Comhairle na nÓg has been really engaged on that and we have been assisted on that by our colleagues in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, so work is ongoing.

Considerable further work is required. We feel confident that the new dialogue process will seek to address some of those challenges.