Ms Sadhbh O'Neill:

I thank Senator Higgins very much for her question about how we push the conversation to targets, sub-targets and the budgetary process. In regard to climate, the obvious place to start is in climate-proofing Government decisions, specifically around infrastructure and projects that are listed in the national development plan. In addition to that, local authorities are now going to be required to produce climate action plans this year, and there is a role there for the public participation networks, PPNs, to be involved as well. There are many opportunities for climate considerations and for the emissions impact of essentially political decisions to be evaluated in advance. I mention this because these are the politically controversial decisions of the day. Politicians have wish lists for roads and other local projects that they want to see funded by the State. Unfortunately, the manner in which certain projects make their way onto lists, given the long lead-in times for road projects in particular, does not lend itself easily to being evaluated for climate impacts in a timely fashion. Shadow pricing is not sufficient. We need to look well beyond just the carbon cost of an investment and look at the emissions impact and how that relates to the carbon budgeting cycle. These are technical evaluative mechanisms but they are critical to ensure that, as colleagues have said, we are assessing projects against the SDGs in advance of approving and funding them.

The second point on climate finance is also extremely important. My understanding is that the Government argument is that it does not have projects to invest in. It does not have NGOs with capacity to invest in. Other people have to scale up their actions in order to provide that level of climate finance. I do not think that stacks up at all. There are many ways in which the Government could invest in that recognised 0.7% of GDP. There are many avenues available other than the traditional ones through overseas development assistance, ODA. I understand the development organisations are critical of the fact that the Department does not want to spend its climate finance contribution outside of the ODA framework. However, as international negotiations proceed around loss and damage and other financial facilities that might open up, we see there are other ways and avenues to support adaptation, mitigation and climate finance outside of existing frameworks. They should be explored in detail. I wholeheartedly agree that there is no reason Ireland should not be meeting its full obligations in this manner.