Ms Karol Balfe:

I hope there is no political or legal reason that we cannot amend the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act. We published this research in September and we will work on it with Deputy Pringle's office. He was instrumental in the Bill coming before the House in 2018 with Trócaire and the Global Legal Action Network. This set of recommendations on the Act is based on a very recent review. It is important to note it is relatively new legislation which dates to 2018. It is not an incredibly old Act when we look at other legislation. It is clear what we can do to review it; the question is what our level of ambition will be. The Fossil Fuel Divestment Act refers to the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund only. It refers to undertakings only. It excludes indirect investments. There is an immediate set of actions that we could take to strengthen the Act, specifically to allow the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to have a greater impact and make it more effective.

Even back in 2018, the warning bells were very much ringing with regard to the climate crisis but where we are in 2023 is unprecedented in terms of its scale.

Ireland has the opportunity to be a real leader. The bigger question around ambition is how much further we could go beyond the strategic investment fund, and how we will look at the billions that are not even touched by the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act. Those figures are staggering. Some €6.1 billion is being channelled through Ireland. That is what it boils down to. We will certainly engage with the committee and through Deputy Pringle's office, along with any other parties that are interested in taking this forward. We hope it is not in the realms of imagination that the commitments we made in the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act could easily be strengthened to address some of these shortcomings. It is hoped there will not be major political or legal barriers to this.