Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Before Dr. Doran replies, I wish to add my tuppence worth because of the tight time schedule. I was intrigued when he said a clearly defined relationship in terms of the expert body was just as important as targets. We have a very poor history of designing good institutional architecture. That may well be because we inherited architecture that we had not moulded ourselves. In that context, there may be a different set of circumstances here compared to other countries. How would Dr. Doran characterise climate change legislation that does not contain explicitly stated targets? Would it be fit for purpose? We sought but did not get the legal advice from the Attorney General on this issue. Some of us assume there is a concern that including targets would make the legislation justiciable, which is why there is some resistance to it. It might not be the only reason and I suspect it is not. A contributor in one of our earlier sessions last week referred to the UK model and said there were political, as opposed to legal, targets and that they were important as almost a means of including them, yet Dr. Doran spoke about the UK Act being aspirational. I would like to hear his comments on these points.