Mr. Simon Murtagh:

To answer Deputy O'Rourke about the overall financial architecture, I will start with Barbados and, as was said, the Bridgetown Initiative, then the Macron summit in the summer. At the moment, there is a task force on international taxation which is being initiated by France and Kenya. There are a number of countries which have been asked to join, and are likely to join, and Ireland is listed among them. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, is very much using the language of that task force, which is good to hear, with "innovative sources of finance" being the key phrase. We would urge that these are the fairest and most progressive sources of finance. The cornerstone of this are international taxes on wealth which would reach the trillions. That is where this is moving. When it comes to COP28, there will be a high-level ministerial statement towards the end. Therefore, we will be looking for strong language on all the areas mentioned by our Africa director first of all, on community-led delivery, that is, when it comes to loss and damage the finance reaches communities on the ground, but also on this key fairness principle within the innovative sources of finance. It looks like Ireland is getting close to that. We do not have an announcement but certainly listening to the Minister last week, he talked about those sources of finance and emphasised them very strongly.

Another point, outside of the COP process, is on the investment piece. In the European package Deputy Bruton spoke about, there is a directive which the committee members will all have heard of now. This is the corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDD. That is coming to the end now. The trilogue process is ending. MEPs on all sides - across parties and Independents - have been tremendous on this. We are now at the point, working also with our Government through the Council, of trying to keep financial institutions to their climate obligations, to see that this key principle is at least maintained, and that there is a sensitivity in the final directive towards indigenous people on the ground and that it is very gender-responsive as well. Those are the key principles. Certainly that CSDD, which is a terrible acronym, is another key piece of legislation on which we are all working and it very much affects financial investments. We are fighting to keep that in, quite frankly.