Ms Siobhan Curran:

To echo what Ms McKenna said the partners and organisations in civil society we work with have key messages that they want adequate, predictable and accessible grant-based funding. The biggest accountability gap is in promises made by richer countries that are then not delivered and this has been seen time and time again at every COP. It erodes the trust because we know a promise was made to deliver €100 billion by 2020 and the longer that is not delivered, the more trust is eroded because that is really small in comparison to the actual need. That is the first part of the accountability.

Then there is how that is delivered. We know a lot of it is delivered through loans and pushing countries further into debt so again it is not an appropriate response. Thankfully Ireland has not taken that approach and is good on providing adaptation-focused finance, which is to be welcomed. Overall, countries need predictable flows of climate finance and Ireland needs to increase its volume of climate finance. At the moment the figures for 2020 show we delivered €88.3 million in climate finance, and it has increased since then, and in this budget €25 million was provided and another €10 million from the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. While we have good practice in terms of focusing on adaptation and it is slowly increasing, but our commitment as Ireland in the programme for Government was for €225 million and that is not really our fair share. The Overseas Development Institute, ODI, has done very good and rigorous research on this and it says our fair share is $520 million. We are reaching a small amount of our fair share and we would like to see Ireland meeting our climate finance obligations, increasing it in line with our fair share but also thinking ahead because we are on the cusp of the post-2025 figures on climate finance that need to be delivered. The figures will increase dramatically and we know we have to increase in line with need and with the science. That is the key thing.

In terms of adaptation, because it also relates to that, the majority of climate finance that is being delivered globally focused on mitigation and there should be a balance between mitigation and adaptation. When we looked at the figures for this year it was disappointing that the adaptation targets were again not met. At the COP, the African group asked for an agenda item to be added to focus on a roadmap to deliver on the adaptation funding. It did not make it on to the agenda and so there was no progress on this. There was also discussion during the COP about richer countries meeting the cumulative shortfall, so not just reaching the €100 billion. Every year we do not meet it, it adds up. That also did not make it to the final agreement. That is a warning and an alarm bell for us that we need to address that because as we look to the loss and damage fund, which is crucial, that also needs to be delivered and funded. Learning from where we have not met our promises already is crucial for looking ahead.