Former President of Ireland, Ballina native, Mary Robinson is calling on world leaders to take decisive action to end the use of fossil fuels during the UN climate summit beginning this week.

According to today’s Irish Independent, the now climate change and human rights campaigner Mrs Robinson insists much greater ambition must be demonstrated if there is to be any hope of keeping global temperature rise to a manageable level.

She was speaking ahead of a conference at University College Cork being held today to mark the start of the COP28 climate summit on Thursday.

“At COP28, we need to drive greater ambition on climate action among world leaders and governments,” she said.

“This is extremely important in order to keep 1.5 alive.

“For this, we need to phase out fossil fuels and scale up clean energy.”