Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment to a very key role at COP29, namely a senior COP presidency role co-leading negotiations on climate adaptation. While that is somewhat tangential to what we are discussing here, it is also very closely related. One of my key concerns relates to how we treat climate finance, the €225 million that we are making available and the need to keep that separate from our overseas development aid. We should make it supplemental to overseas development aid and not be counting both things twice and together, because we do great work with that. The other issue is about direction. Ireland is very good in terms of focusing it climate finance on the principles of locally led adaptation. We can unlock all sorts of co-benefits by investing directly in communities and building capacity within communities. I would like to see that teased out more. I would also like to see us having an influence on the direction of travel of other countries in the context of how they direct their climate finance flows.

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