Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I had the good fortune to sit at the back of the hall as the Citizens' Assembly went through its four days of discussion, deliberation and decision-making. My sense of this recommendation was that it came out of frustration at a lack of action, which committee members have heard us express at times. The assembly was reaching for tools that could be used to ensure action, and the committee discussed this with Ms Justice Laffoy when she came before it. When many of us in this delegation were involved over the course of eight years in seeking to influence the design of the climate law, the focus of Friends of the Earth was not on judicial accountability for action or inaction but on parliamentary accountability. For us in particular it was about independent evidence, timely planning and a cycle of accountability underpinned by the legal target. We did not get everything we wanted in the law to drive policy in the sense of legal targets and carbon budgets. The accountability cycle is there, if not quite in the way we would have liked it to be. It is not as tight as we would like. In this context, we saw the Citizens' Assembly reach for the next step, which is bringing the Government to court. This is not the space in which Friends of the Earth operates but over the years other environmental organisations have sought legal redress from Irish or European courts as a last resort for forcing compliance and action. If we want to avoid this, we have to put in place stronger measures to ensure action in the first place. As in most cases, everyone would prefer if we did not have to go to court to get something done if it could be done some other way.

Other colleagues might like to comment more directly on this proposal in terms of whether it should involve new or existing agencies. We have the Climate Change Advisory Council, which is only just up and running with regard to its existing remit. There is a discussion about whether it is the right body to have the legal backstop of last resort. The first step is to put in place a tighter carbon budget over a five-year period and a tighter policy planning regime, and then hopefully we would not need judicial review as a last resort. Judicial review is always there, and in case it is not known, the existing national mitigation plan is being taken to court by Friends of the Irish Environment on the basis that it does not comply with the existing law. It will be a very interesting test case in January, albeit rendered politically moot by the fact the mitigation plan will be revised. It will be very interesting to see whether the plan passes muster legally.

If nothing else, we know that it has not passed muster in terms of its impact.

Others may wish to comment.