Ms Siobhan Curran:

To add in answer to Deputy Carthy's question earlier about the additionality of climate finance, at the moment we have a climate finance commitment that falls under a global commitment of $100 billion per year that was supposed to be provided from 2020 to 2025. That has not been met on a global scale or on an Irish scale. Although Ireland has committed to providing €225 million in climate finance, so far we have provided €99.6 million. That is our latest figure, so we are a bit off the €225 million, but that sum, to clarify, is also not our fair share. We and Christian Aid have worked on this. The key point is that we are meeting one fifth of our fair share of climate finance at the moment, so we really need to meet the full commitment as soon as possible. The first year we were supposed to meet it was 2020, so every year we do not meet that target results in a cumulative shortfall. Looking at Ireland's ranking in the OECD figures, we come in at about No. 17 out of 23 on climate finance. We are way down at the bottom of the leader table. We therefore call on Ireland to meet our fair share of €500 million per annum, and that should be additional to ODA. That might be channelled through ODA. Some of the way climate finance is delivered is within that, and we think that grant-based model is quite positive but we would like to see the figures disentangled in order that we can be sure that climate finance does not take from development finance.

On loss and damage, we and Christian Aid launched a report hosted by Deputy Ó Cathasaigh in the audiovisual room last week on loss and damage in which we have estimated what Ireland's fair share of loss and damage finance would be. We have estimated based on the most respected figures. There is a lot of academic research on this but there is an estimation of the loss and damage need by 2030 being €513 billion per annum. We have calculated what Ireland's fair share of that loss and damage finance would be and it is €1.5 billion per annum. That figure sounds quite large when we think of Ireland's current commitment to climate finance of €99 million. I will make two points. First, it is a realistic estimation of need, and this is what we are looking at in terms of loss and damage. The costs of the climate crisis are escalating and getting worse and they will be high. Second, when we compare €1.5 billion with our 0.7% of GNI, by 2030, that would be about 0.2%, so it is also achievable. I will not take too much time on this, but we are really looking for Ireland to set out a pathway towards €1.5 billion by 2030 plus pay our existing adaptation and mitigation finance.

In advance of COP, we have a great opportunity. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, played a really prominent role at COP last year in securing the loss and damage fund. This year it is about getting it operationalised. As Ms Finnan said, it is an empty bucket, which is no use to anybody, but the process at this COP is to move it from being an empty bucket to a fund that works and delivers. If we could get one key thing at this COP, it would be that richer countries commit to paying first and most and move first. The trust between developing and developed countries at this point is completely eroded because richer countries keep breaking promises. If there could be a commitment, with Ireland at the helm within the EU on this, I think it would really bode well for finally addressing loss and damage.