Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I understand the disappointment with COP, but it is still probably our greatest hope for mobilising collective action and it is still definitely worth the sustained commitment. I certainly support the call regarding loss and damage because, as Mr. O'Neill rightly points out, trying to invest in devastated communities will not yield a commercial return. We need to recognise that investment of this nature is required or else we will see migration on a massive scale that will be bad for everyone. We need to find a route to do this.

I am not so sure on the workability of some of our guests' other blanket policies, such as refraining from all fossil fuel investment or ending all subsidies relating to fossil fuels. We have seen in this crisis that governments have had to look at storage of fossil fuels. They have had to subsidise the energy bills of people who are extremely vulnerable. I worry about hoisting very rigid policies that, unfortunately, become very difficult to implement and about mobilising public support for them. That is something I, as a former Minister, grapple with. I see things slightly differently from the witnesses' perspective. They say that Ireland should reach net zero by 2029 in order that we might have a good chance of keeping global temperatures down. If they are advocating that we adopt very rigid positions around certain things, we will lose the room. It is really important that we find a way of mobilising people. The decisions we have taken are going to be really difficult to implement. As a result, we need to a way of working to deliver these things as well as being aware that we have to continually lift our ambition. Saying that there can never be any fossil fuel investment in Europe just does not gel with the reality of day-to-day management of some of the challenges thrown before Government. I can understand why the witnesses want to have positions of very strong principle, but people like ourselves who are trying to manage the messy challenge of getting public support for these policies meet a slightly different test. That is what we are grappling with.