Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

With hard times upon us, with energy shortages and blackouts at hand and food shortages in the offing, the climate catastrophe brigade, the political and business elites have once again headed off for a bit of winter sunshine and a talking shop exercise that is now commonly referred to as COP, or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This year it was the turn of Egypt to wine and dine the assembled hordes. It certainly seems that fine wine flowed freely and posh food was piled high as the hypocritical finger-pointing elites homed their attention in on how the ordinary citizens are going to have to do without.

The COP meetings have long followed an entirely predictable pattern. Each year hundreds of posturing delegates and thousands of protestors, celebrities, and assorted hangers-on fly in from around the world - 400 private jets, from what I gather, causing untold damage to our climate - to lecture us all on our carbon footprints. They then start up the negotiations and rapidly reach the usual deadlock, before announcing a last-minute breakthrough. Then, in the cold light of day, everybody accepts that nothing has been achieved beyond expanded waistlines and serious hangovers for all the delegates. Exposing Irish taxpayer funds, which are supposed to combat climate change, to the criminal abuse of climate finance is reckless. Based on research carried out by Deloitte and others, it is now clear a substantial proportion of the international climate finance fund is ending up in the bank accounts of dictators and criminals. Therefore, one simple question exists: why would the Taoiseach or the Minister, Deputy Ryan, fly to Egypt to announce to the world that Ireland would dramatically increase its contribution to such a fund? Irish taxpayers deserve to know the answer to this question. The Minister took 55 people with him, as far as I know. Maybe the Minister will deny this. Maybe it was 54 people or whatever. We need to know exactly who they were. The taxpayers are paying for it and we need to know who these people are and where they are from. This is a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money.

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