“The Government welcomes the adoption of the TCFD by those corporates who are already engaged with the Task Force and is actively encouraging greater take up as more Irish firms look to accelerate and scale their own climate transition plans. The implementation of the recommendations represents good practice for good companies and opens up access to more sustainable pools of growth capital while addressing the needs of investors for greater transparency.”
Paschal Donohoe T.D., Minister for Finance of Ireland and President of the Eurogroup
Ireland is well established as a centre of excellence in Sustainable Finance. We are equipped with the sustainable finance infrastructure and the educated and dynamic workforce required to deliver on our net-zero ambitions and embrace the climate-related opportunities ahead. This programme will accelerate achievement of these goals through capacity building, thought leadership and increasing the levels of Irish climate-related reporting and disclosures.
The Irish Road to COP26 programme is aligned to the goals of COP26 and it will accelerate our transition to net-zero by –
- By continuing to demonstrate thought leadership in this area hosting high profile events including Climate Finance Week 2021 which is now in its fourth year, 2020 event seeing over 5,000 attendees.
- Enhancing the skills of our educated and dynamic workforce, in 2020 we saw 1,400 professionals upskilled in Sustainable Finance and we look to increase this figure to a total of 3,000 by the end of 2021.
- Increasing Irish support of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) through an Irish TCFD support campaign. The implementation of the recommendations represents best practice for companies and opens up access to more sustainable pools of growth capital while addressing the needs of investors for greater transparency.
- It will also see the publication, later in the year of the first Irish Sustainable Finance Roadmap.
Irish Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) support campaign -
This campaign is delivered by Sustainable Finance Ireland, supported by the Department of Finance and is an output of the Ireland for Finance strategy and action plan. The campaign is further supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The Irish TCFD support campaign runs in the lead up to, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 1 – 12 November 2021. The COP26 summit will bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The COP26 Private Finance Hub Strategy has four key themes: Reporting, Risk Management, Returns & Mobilisation. The TCFD recommendations are strongly weaved throughout this strategy and feature in many of the calls to action for governments, the financial sector, standard setters, and companies.
This campaign is strongly aligned to the Reporting element of the COP26 Private strategy. We aim to increase the Irish support of the TCFD and to enhance the levels of climate-related reporting and disclosures in Ireland. To do this we worked closely with the United Nations Environment Programme, Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) to develop bespoke training focused on TCFD and climate-related reporting more generally.
More information about the TCFD recommendations and how they can be implemented can be found here.
Key elements of the campaign:
- Training/capacity building programme developed with the UNEP FI and delivered in conjunction with Skillnet Ireland:
Points to note:
- Both above courses are accredited with Institute of Banking (IOB) Continuous Professions Development (CPD) hours.
- There is no cost for the training or is there a cost to become a supporter of the TCFD.
- In June we held a high-level webinar for Irish TCFD campaign supporters (new and existing) to demonstrate the why of TCFD. To view each speakers contribution please see below videos:
- During CFWI 2021 we will hold a supporter’s event highlighting the Irish support of the TCFD recommendations, demonstrating overall impact and why it works etc. and new supporters of the TCFD will be announced as part of this overall Irish collective.
