Ms Justice Mary Laffoy:

To go back to the first thing Deputy Ryan said, it is not just about giving information that there is such a thing as climate change; it is how do we deal with it. That is the information we gave. If the Deputy looks at what we did in relation to energy, the first talk was from Marie Donnelly on "How do I heat, power and service my home or place of work." The next session was Dr. Brian Motherway on "How would I heat, power and service my home and place of work if Ireland was a world leader". We not only gave information about the way it is but we gave information about what needs to be done. I agree with Deputy Ryan that what we have to get across is how we get a better Ireland.

On the question of the Constitution, there is sufficient protection for the personal rights of citizens in the Constitution. There is a lot of protection in the environmental area in EU law, for example, the Habitats Directive. We also have the European convention. To be honest, I have not given this any thought but off the top of my head I am not inclined to the view that there is a need for some constitutional amendment to protect environmental rights. In fact, I think there may have been a High Court decision in which this was raised a couple of months ago, which may be under appeal so I do not want to say anything more about that.