Ms Siobhan Curran:

I thank the Chair and members of the committee for the opportunity to present this morning. We know the climate crisis is spiralling out of control and we all saw the scenes in Valencia last week. In the work Trócaire does and in the countries in which we work in southern Africa we have seen countries declare states of disaster due to drought. We continue to see human suffering due to crop failure, food insecurity and the loss of livelihoods. We know the climate crisis is a crisis of inequality.

In Somalia, where Trócaire works, more than 43,000 people lost their lives due to the recent drought across the Horn of Africa which was the worst in 40 years. Half of the 43,000 people who lost their lives were children under five years of age. Somalia has minimal emissions - 0.03% of global emissions - so there is a great injustice here in that richer countries and corporations continuously fail to reduce emissions or to mobilise climate finance on the scale that is needed. This COP is a climate finance COP.

It is a chance to redress the inequality and ensure that climate finance, an obligation of developed countries, flows from north to south. It is a matter of justice and will allow so-called developing countries to develop ambitious climate action plans.

I will speak specifically to the issue of loss and damage while Mr. Fitzpatrick will speak to the broader climate finance goal. The losses and damages caused by climate finance are pushing countries into unsustainable debt and diverting public finances from development needs. Members will remember that, after decades of struggle, a new loss and damage fund was operationalised at COP28 last year. This was a milestone. The first financial pledges were announced, with $702 million pledged to the loss and damage fund. However, this covered less than 0.2% of what was needed. With Christian Aid Ireland, we conducted research that found that Ireland’s fair share of loss and damage finance was projected to be at least €1.5 billion per year by 2030. Ireland pledged €25 million last year at COP for loss and damage, representing less than 1% of our fair share. Given the global picture, the milestone that was the loss and damage fund will be meaningless if it is an empty fund. It needs to be filled. Otherwise, developing countries will be let down again. We need a clear commitment to scale up new public finance for loss and damage.

A critical issue at COP will be the inclusion of loss and damage as a subgoal of the overall new climate finance goal, as no money has yet flowed to the loss and damage fund under the UNFCCC and there has historically been an imbalance between mitigation and adaptation finance. There should be a subgoal of identifying a floor of $400 billion for loss and damage out of an overall climate finance goal of at least $1 trillion. We can discuss the figures further if members have questions about them. This point can seem very technical, but it is crucial. One of the main problems in climate finance is the lack of transparency and accountability. This is an accountability measure, but it also consolidates loss and damage as the third pillar of climate finance that it should be. We call on Ireland to progress these matters at COP. We are also looking for a commitment from the next Government to scale up Ireland’s loss and damage finance.

The figures can seem quite large. We are talking about going from millions to billions in Ireland and, globally, to trillions. This is very possible, though. It is a question of looking at new sources of climate finance. For example, oil and gas companies have taken an average of $2.8 billion per day in profits since 1970. There are widespread calls for windfall taxes on oil and gas companies, including by the UN Secretary General, who has called for the “immoral” soaring profits of oil and gas companies to be taxed and argues that “grotesque greed” is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people while destroying our only common home. We call on Ireland to advocate at COP29 for windfall taxes and, thereafter, to engage in initiatives to mobilise new sources of public finance that we need for climate finance. The most marginalised and poorest are facing the worst impacts of the crisis and being left to pick up the pieces with no support. We are looking at this COP for Ireland to ensure that climate action is centred on justice and equity.