Dr. Peter Doran:

I thank the joint committee. It is a great privilege and pleasure to have the opportunity to be here.

At the head of my submission for Ceartas I quote William McDonough, an award-winning green architect, who said, “Design is the first signal of human intention.” In other words, if we get the design right and the intention behind it is right, many of the problems down the line will be avoided. My interest and the focus of my paper was the design principle that we might pick up, in particular, from the UK Climate Change Act 2008.

Based on the heads of the climate action and low carbon development Bill, it provides a sound structure that will certainly bring about a step change in creating a law-based arrangement for a whole-of-government approach. That in itself, as other speakers have said, will be tremendous progress in institutionalising our whole of government response to climate change. In the UK legislation there is a great focus on the presence of targets. When we talk about the role that reference has played in the Irish debate, we have tended to focus on the presence of the headline target for 2050 and the other targets, but we should not lose sight of the way in which these targets are fully integrated into a rather ingenious design, a whole set of innovative reporting and budget mechanisms.

In order to appreciate the role of these targets and the presence of the targets in the legislation, we have to see it in the round. The targets and objectives are inseparable from the overall design. One of the particular features is the independent and very robust role given to the climate change committee which is the expert body in the United Kingdom. All of this is intended to turn a moment of consensus in British politics into an opportunity to adopt a long-range policy framework guided by a clear long-range objective. There are many ways to project that objective and insert it in the proposed Irish legislation. It can be numerical or a reference to the language of carbon neutrality or low carbon. We need that kind of lighthouse somewhere in the legislation to guide us all home to the safe operating space for the climate.

There is a robust role for parliamentary scrutiny, as well as the expert body. One of the roles clear objectives and targets in legislation can play is to enhance the scrutiny role of parliamentary committees and the wider Parliament.

Another design principle at the heart of the UK legislation is the creation of what I call a bulwark or circuit-breaker to begin to devolve some of the tricky questions of the capacity of the various sectors to contribute to climate change mitigation, where the limits of that capacity begin and end and where the special pleading begins and ends. The politicisation of the process leading to the various drafts of the Irish legislation, the highly political debate and the special pleas from business and agriculture have demonstrated just how difficult it can be to unpack with clarity the real capacity within sectors to embrace innovation and change and the science-led objective which is to have reductions of around 80% to 95% by 2050.

The independence, in particular, of the expert body, its very clear mandate, the very clearly defined relationships between the expert body and the Minister and the ability of the expert body to lay reports before Parliament are as important a feature of the UK legislation as the presence of targets and objectives.