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

Ireland’s all-of-government international climate finance roadmap, published in July 2022, sets out the strategy for achieving our international climate finance targets, which involve more than doubling our funding for developing countries to €225 million annually by 2025. This commitment was made in 2021 by my colleague the Tánaiste at COP26 in Glasgow. Since 2020, we have more than doubled our climate finance. Ireland’s 2023 climate finance expenditure is expected to be confirmed as totalling more than €156 million, in 2024 will likely exceed €181 million and next year we will meet the target of €225 million on schedule.

We recognises that vulnerable countries which have contributed least to the climate crisis are suffering the most from its impacts. The geographic focus of our funding is on less developed countries and small island states in particular. The thematic priorities of the roadmap centre on strengthening climate resilience and adaptation. About 80% of our climate finance goes to adaptation, which is what the developing countries want. It is 100% grant funded and is not tied, not commercial and not based on loans; it is real support. The principles outlined in the roadmap include a focus on leaving no one behind and on gender-sensitive and locally led climate action.

Our climate finance contributes to the meeting of the current $100 billion goal. The forthcoming COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, is expected to deliver an agreement on a new collective quantified goal to replace the previous goal. The negotiations are going to be difficult, and it is far from certain that we will get agreement. Any agreement must involve agreement on how we advance climate adaptation, how we get Article 6 provisions in place so that we can get funding for nature, as well as how we get transparency in accounting and reporting systems in the international energy and minerals system in order that we avoid a trade war on climate and, more important than anything else, how we bring climate and development together for climate justice, which is at the centre of the Government's approach and position.

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