Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I very much appreciated going to that event hosted by Deputy Ó Cathasaigh. It was useful. There is real urgency. The reason we support the World Bank is because we need to be quick. The former US Vice-President, Al Gore, stated in a good presentation earlier on the summer that there is a €1 billion climate impact event happening every 18 days. It is happening now. It is here and now. However, we have to recognises that the more we invest in mitigation and adaptation, the less we will have to invest in loss and damage. They are connected. They compliment each other. That is why I say we need a mosaic of finance solutions. We need a variety of different financing solutions in mitigation, in adaptation, and in loss and damage. What Ireland continues to say, and will say in Dubai, is what we are really focusing on is to make sure that the investment goes, in particular, to the most vulnerable countries. In climate financing to date, that has not happened. Through our ODA programme, my Department and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Finance, we have a proud record of supplying grant-led, not-tied, locally empowered support. The doubling of our climate finance, which we will deliver the year after next, to €225 million is a not insignificant achievement of which we should be proud. However, we need to go further. One of the best ways of going further is, in the context of the negotiations, looking to get money from the polluters and from global financial flows, because the scale of the financing we need, as was set out in that report, is beyond compare.

See this speech in context