Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton. This is not the first time I have raised this issue of the Energy Charter Treaty and the modernisation process, Ireland's position is on that treaty and when Ireland will cut its losses and walk away from it.

The Energy Charter Treaty was ratified in the 1990s by Ireland with no debate and it has been lingering around like a bad smell ever since. It is an international treaty that protects fossil fuel companies from any risk to their profits or future profits. The investor provisions in the Energy Charter Treaty are of the most archaic form of investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS. ISDS is a legal system that is based on the neocolonial mindset that we cannot trust new democracies or foreign countries for investors and, therefore, investors must have the protection of a private court system for corporations. This is despite the fact the OECD and another academic meta-analysis of all of the investment protections within treaties found that the effect of ISDS in promoting investment into countries is so small as to be considered zero.

What we have seen in recent years is a significant escalation in the number of ISDS cases that are being taken by corporations, especially since 2013. What is most concerning is the use of ISDS in the Energy Charter Treaty to stymie climate action, so much so that the Energy Charter Treaty was flagged in the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Working Group III report. That report could not have been any clearer. It stated that agreements such as the Energy Charter Treaty with their investment protections are being used by fossil fuel companies to block national legislation aimed at phasing out the use of their assets.

So far, fossil fuel companies have commenced or threatened legal action to the value of €2.15 trillion against countries and their governments for taking climate action. For example, the Corrib gas field is one of the ones that was flagged as most likely where companies have threatened legal action against Ireland in the past but, that we know of, we have never been taken to court.

In 2018, the then EU Commissioner for Trade, Dr. Cecilia Malmström, declared that ISDS was dead, and yet under the current modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty the EU has not even put ISDS on the table for reform or modernisation. This is despite the fact an EU court ruling found that ISDS and the Energy Charter Treaty is contrary to EU law.

The last time I asked the question of a Minister, we were over in the convention centre and I was told the modernisation process was ongoing and we would wait and see how it went. To be honest, we know it is going nowhere. The fact the most insidious part of the agreement is not even on the table for reform means we are wasting valuable time in tackling climate action by remaining a party to this dinosaur agreement.

Climate change has fundamentally changed the world. We woke up only this morning to hear the news that not only will Ireland not meet its climate emission targets this year but they are actually going up. My question for the Minister of State is, at what point do we face the reality that the Energy Charter Treaty cannot be reformed, it is not fit for purpose and it does not belong in a world system where we are facing planetary breakdown from climate change?