Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is my understanding that Met Éireann provides a public service. I understand from Mr. Moran that the competencies of the Met Éireann personnel are in the science area, their expertise is in the STEM professions. We then have the problem of communication. Met Éireann has this superb resource, the trust of the public and yet it does not have the competency in communications to get the message across. That concerns me. Is this something that Met Éireann could do? Should the Government be resourcing Met Éireann to enable it to communicate the message? This could be the critical link. This is what is missing. Met Éireann enjoys public trust, and has all the competencies and expertise in science, but all that knowledge is not being communicated to the public.

My second point is on attribution and impact-based decision-making. I wish to raise the precautionary principle. What I am hearing from Mr. Moran's response is that Met Éireann is taking a very conservative approach to climate change. However, there is the mechanism of the precautionary principle. I wonder whether Met Éireann uses or could advance that principle? We all recognise here that climate change is happening. As Mr. Séamus Walsh stated, there is a recognition of global warming and of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. It is critical that the message is coming across to the public. My sense is that Mr. Moran's conservative approach is erring on the side of caution. Could the precautionary principle be used to move the issue of messaging forward in a more proactive way in order that the listener and those dependent on Met Éireann's message are forearmed by that message, thereby getting the warning?

I now have a question for Ms Forbes. My interpretation of Ms Forbes's contribution is that climate change is so complex that RTÉ had better not do anything and not take action. As Senator Marshall suggested, which I would support 100%, RTÉ as a service provider instead could be doing lots of little actions, small sized messaging on how the consumer can take action. That can happen through a whole array of programmes. For instance, if we want to decrease the amount of emissions going into the atmosphere, we can drive our cars more slowly. That reduction in speed will have an immediate effect. If one takes a glass of water from the tap, one does not need to buy plastic bottles of water that have been stored for indeterminate periods.

Can RTÉ move away from the complexity and recognise the problem? Can it grasp the nettle and embrace it and decide that as the service provider, it will start to use every opportunity to inform the public as to what actions they can start taking right away? Instead of just talking, RTÉ can show the way to take action. Could that be done?