Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I very much welcome the opportunity to discuss this legislation with the committee. As the committee has the Friends of the Earth written submission from April and my opening statement, I will not go through them in detail, as the Chairman suggested. I will make a few comments on elements of the Bill and then introduce the sections on which I can most usefully engage with members.

Before even that, I would like to address a few questions raised with Professor Bates, particularly about the IPCC. One of the interesting things about the IPCC is that it is not a purely scientific body. What makes the panel interesting for civil society actors like us is that the scientists do their work over a number of years, then the panel's experts try to synthesise and find the areas and findings around which there is the most scientific evidence among the peer reviewed papers and, in a third stage, they produce a summary for policy makers. What is interesting about that is officials from every government that is a party to the panel sign off on the summary. For example, when I worked on this issue six years ago, I was able to say the Bush government in the US has signed off on what the IPCC is saying and what I am saying we should act on. While it is scientifically produced, it has a policy relevant seal on it, which is useful in helping to translate it into policy. The mantra of the panel is not to be policy prescriptive, but to be policy relevant. It is not pure science as it has that policy veneer on top of it.

Senator Mac Conghail asked about the relationship between the targets in the IPCC report and the findings to which Professor Bates referred. It is worth touching on that because of the relevance to our own country. The panel is slow moving. For example, the report coming out this year will only look at science that has been peer reviewed up to three years ago. The findings in the report six years ago were that to have a 50% chance of staying under 2° we needed to reduce our emissions in industrialised countries by between 20% and 40% by 2020 and by between 80% and 95% by 2050, which is where that figure comes from in the discussion so far. However, we are only talking about the lower end of the target for 2020.

I very much hope the papers mentioned by Professor Bates about climate sensitivity come true because otherwise we are in trouble, as we are running way beyond those projections currently. Other science is finding that we need to hit much tougher targets sooner and this will not be included in the upcoming IPCC report. These include Meinhsausen et al. in 2009, Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre, Manchester, and James Hansen, the former head of the NASA climate observatory in the US. There are currents of science saying on the one hand that if sensitivity is less, we might be in better shape while, on the other, they are saying if it is not good, then our emissions are driving us way beyond 2° to between 4° and 6°. There is a grey area and it is not straightforward easy ground for us.

I refer to the Bill. Deputy Catherine Murphy said on Friday that without the Attorney General's advice, the committee is dealing with this blindfolded. That is an issue with regard to judging whether targets can be inserted in the Bill. Senator Keane responded that if the Government cannot see its way to giving the committee the advice, independent advice might be needed. That would be a good way forward for the committee. To engage in this new form of legislative process without advice makes it difficult to proceed.

On the issue of the national roadmap and sequencing, many people are saying five years rather than seven and we agree with that. Seven years is too long. The advisory body should be required to give its advice before the national roadmap is drawn up. Currently, the Bill states "may" be advised. We agreed with the climate leaders group and An Taisce on sequencing. They said the national roadmap should come first. We would go further and say the Dáil should vote on it and adopt it. That would give it the all-party seal of approval we hope to have for the Bill. While it will not make the targets in the roadmap legally binding, it will enable successive Governments to give a seal of approval to any emissions figures in the national roadmap.

Senator Mac Conghail asked about burden sharing within the Irish target and whether that is a European target or one we adopt ourselves. We see that as how it would work. The national roadmap would reflect our international obligations or whatever we take on ourselves and then allocate that target among the sectors. We do not imagine it would be pro rata. We would judge, as an island nation, for example, whether more should be given to transport or agriculture than to housing.

The Aarhus definition rather than the freedom of information definition is much wider. and that would be best in terms of which public bodies are covered.

One of the big issues is the external advisory body. Although consensus is building around the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council as a model, we would go one step further and we are happy to engage on this. In the UK, the climate committee puts its reports before parliament and not simply before the government. That might empower this committee and equivalent committees to engage more fully.

I would also be happy to engage on the issue of internal co-ordination as opposed to expert advice, the issue of whether the Department of the Taoiseach comes in and how that is best done and the issue of what targets we take on and how they are advised.