Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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95.To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if he will advocate to increase Ireland’s climate finance and loss and damage funding to the agreed ‘fair share’ of €500 million per annum; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32368/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The provision of climate finance to developing countries is an integral aspect of Ireland’s climate policy, foreign policy and development cooperation.

In recent years, we have steadily increased our annual international climate-related expenditure. At COP26, held in Glasgow in November 2021, the Taoiseach announced that Ireland would provide at least €225 million in climate finance per year to developing countries by 2025. The target represents a more than doubling of our climate finance from 2020 levels.

Ireland is on track to reach the €225 million target by 2025. In 2022, Ireland provided €120.8 million in international climate finance. Current estimates show that Ireland provided at least €153 million in international climate finance in 2023. A final figure will be available later this year. The current estimate for Ireland’s climate finance spend in 2024 stands at €181 million.

At the opening plenary of COP28 in November 2023 in Dubai, final agreement was reached on a new Loss and Damage Fund to support developing countries to respond to the impacts of climate change. Ireland, represented by the Department of Foreign Affairs, played a key role throughout 2023 in the design, scope and structure of the new Fund for Loss and Damage.

In December 2023, at the World Leader’s Summit at COP28, the Taoiseach announced that Ireland will provide €25 million to the new Fund for Loss and Damage over the two years, 2024 and 2025. Ireland’s pledge was the second highest per capita after UAE.

This pledge is a recognition that vulnerable populations that have contributed the least to global emissions have the greatest difficulty getting access to the finance and resources needed to cope with climate change impacts.

I welcome the confirmation from the OECD earlier this year that the previous collective climate finance goal for developed countries of $100 billion was achieved in 2022.

Following on from my role as co-lead negotiator for climate finance at COP28, I look forward to continuing to work with my EU colleagues on climate finance in the lead up to COP29 in November in Baku, where a New Collective Quantified Goal is to be agreed.

Given the scale of finance required to address the climate challenges that we collectively face, public finance alone can not provide the levels needed, which will have to be drawn from public, private, philanthropic, innovative and domestic sources of finance. It is important that we work towards making sure that all finance flows, including private financing and investments, are consistent with the Paris Agreement goals.

While there is no agreement within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process on a per-country division of collective finance goals, Ireland remains committed to reaching the €225m target of climate finance by 2025 and to working with all countries to agree a new and ambitious ‘New Collective Quantified Goal’ at COP29.