Mr. Ross Fitzpatrick:

One of the initiatives announced at COP27 to address loss and damage is something called the global shield. Ireland pledged €10 million in funding to the global shield, along with Germany and a number of other developed countries. This was sold as a solution to the ask from developing countries on the need to provide adequate loss and damage funding. However, one of the issues with the fund is that it is largely insurance-based. From research that Christian Aid has done, we know that insurance-based mechanisms do not cover slow-onset events such as sea level rise and desertification. In response to the Deputy's question, I would say that we need to make sure that when we are drawing up plans to ensure that funding reaches the most vulnerable first, as we are doing now, it does not exclude slow-onset events like sea level rise and desertification, which are actually excluded by some of the solutions that are being sold to us by certain countries.