Professor John Sweeney:

The national dialogue on climate action is off to a good start, but it is not making progress as rapidly as I was hoping for. It suffered changes in its chairmanship early on and has only had two meetings, one of which was held in Athlone and successful in sensitising people. It is important that the general public be involved in this issue as much as possible because we must bring it along in any of the decisions made at the end of the road.

Met Éireann has a prescribed climate change function. While it is true that it has not communicated as part and parcel of that function as publicly as other meteorological agencies, there are signs that this is changing. There was an important article in The Irish Timesa week or so ago in which some of the extreme events this summer were attributed to climate change. We are seeing some changes taking place. In Maynooth we work quite closely with Met Éireann which is a professional and good body with which to work.

I would urge it to have a more public approach than it has to climate change. I recognise that it has limitations. Forecasters tend to work to shorter timescales than climatologists, which this has to be recognised. Met Éireann is involved in European projects that are dealing with climate change and I am hopeful that this will, over time, enable it to feel more confident about communicating the issues publicly.