We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.

The fossil-fuel-based development model has not benefitted all people and those who have benefitted least are now suffering great harm in the face of climate change.

Thanks to the European Union, Ireland has a much more open climate of discussion and debate, as you can see in the media. It means that we are a more questioning society, perhaps more honestly prepared to address serious issues and problems, more open to the idea that different viewpoints should be heard and respected.

Tackling the issue of climate change presents us with an inflection point in human history - a climate justice revolution that separates development from fossil fuels, supports people in the most vulnerable situations to adapt, allows all people to take part, and, most importantly, realise their full potential.

The term 'human rights' has been too often associated with conditionality, and with concerns of developing countries that in order to benefit from open trade they would be required to implement immediately labour and environmental standards of a comparable level to those applied in industrialised countries. At the same time, debates about the primacy of trade as against human rights legal codes have contributed to maintaining the unfortunate impression that the two bodies of law are pursuing incompatible aims.

Ireland is not in a good place at the moment. We have our own humiliation of losing our economic sovereignty, and we're now regaining it slowly and painfully.

The whole human rights structure is based on the accountability of governments.