John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will not use all of the time. I thank Ms Justice Laffoy for her public service and her work in that regard with the Citizens' Assembly. From radio interviews I heard in recent months some members of the assembly spoke very highly of the manner in which the Citizens' Assembly was structured.

I have one basic question. In her opening remarks Ms Justice Laffoy stated how it was implicit in the mandate in the Oireachtas resolution that climate change was real, happening and must be tackled. There is a saying that if one scratches every Christian one will find a pagan somewhere there. Likewise, if one scratches every believer in climate change hard enough one will find a climate change denier. In other words, that becomes apparent if it becomes an issue that affects people personally or the call to change what they are doing affects them personally. There is at least one climate change denier in Parliament and climate change denial seems to be a favoured theme of the President of the United States. I raise the issue because Ms Justice Laffoy stated in her opening remarks that climate change is accepted as a fact. I do not know if we need to take that so much for granted because on a general level, as Deputy Eamon Ryan said, people accept it but when people are pushed to make a change, all the usual easy arguments come up to the effect that climate has been changing for thousands of years. I remember in the 1950s when we had the big snow or the night of the big wind and there has been nothing comparable to that since. That is one of the points where the rubber really hits the road.

It is hard to believe that out of 99 members of the Citizens' Assembly there was no denier, somebody who had doubts or issues or somebody who had questions about the science behind climate change. I believe in the science behind climate change, but it is quite fragile. It can be disrupted by clever, manipulative people. Did this arise in the Citizens' Assembly in a real or meaningful way, notwithstanding the implicit mandate Ms Justice Laffoy was given? Does she have any advice for members of the committee as to how that ought to be addressed, given there has to be a proportion of the population who are not so certain about this? In the last two or three years we have seen democracies where the role of experts, knowledge and science has been easily undermined. That is a challenge that will face us in terms of trying to put flesh on the bones of what the Citizens' Assembly has produced.