Ms Karol Balfe:

It looks at rich countries' global carbon emissions and how much they have overshot, and the fact that they have overshot it by 70%. Africa, for example, is responsible for 4% of global greenhouse emissions. The study basically looks at the economies of richer countries that have been fuelled by fossil fuels or where urbanisation has been fuelled by fossil fuels and so it calculates the figure on that basis. It looks at the fact that the industrialisation and urbanisation has happened at the expense of the global south in terms of global carbon overshooting. I can share that study with the committee. The study looked at the potential of calculating this back from 1890, 1940 and then the 1990s, so the $170 trillion that is owed is actually a conservative figure, rather than going back closer to the industrial age. It is a very reputable study by reputable academics.

With regard to BlackRock and foreign direct investment, ActionAid did a piece of research with Trócaire where we looked at the financial flows that are coming through Ireland's foreign direct investment for new fossil fuels expansion globally. Initially ActionAid had conducted this research just looking at the global south but we also looked at global fossil fuels. Basically, it is largely American or western financial institutions that are using Ireland's foreign direct investment as a hub for transiting their fossil fuel expansion. We looked at the year 2024, when €31 billion came through Ireland in one year for fossil fuel expansions, and 90% of those were new fossil fuel expansions.