Mr. Axel Leahy:

I thank the committees for giving me this opportunity to speak. I know members will fully understand my French accent, so it will not disturb them too much. Climate change is urging us to take actions and to change our way of life radically. Such actions and policies will require unprecedented levels of collaborative decision-making between all actors in society, including the public. Yet, voices of local communities are still, in 2019, facing brick walls. As European citizens, we need to be given the opportunity to participate actively and to have a real input on decisions that have effects on our daily life.

We know the positive effects that public participation can have. We know, for instance, that local communities can substantially enhance the quality of decisions with locally grounded and value-based knowledge. We should not see decisions tailored to reduce our vulnerability to climate change as purely technical. This is not to say that experts should not contribute - their role is crucial - but common technical approaches to decision-making, such as cost-benefit analyses, cannot be the sole remedy to our problems. Often, the real value of assets and landscapes can hardly be monetised and summarised into graphics, as they will have a deeper value and a deeper meaning to local communities. Moreover, we should not forget that local communities are situated at the forefront of climate change, being the first to experience damage from storms, flooding, erosion or biodiversity losses. Why should they then be kept silent? Public participation is, after all, a democratic right.

The problem is that today's conventional forms of public participation do not work. First, uploading a document on a website and then asking people to submit comments or suggestions does not guarantee that these submissions will have any effect on the decision.

Second, and most important, these forms of engagement do not resonate with most people. Do Members of the Oireachtas believe that people of my age regularly check the websites of their local authorities? This is the core of the problem. There is a gap between our decision makers and the public. This criticism demands that new mediums of participation need to be established in Ireland. The Citizens' Assembly is a fantastic example that we can build on, but it cannot be limited to that. Most decisions that affect our everyday lives take place in our communities at a local level. Should every local authority have its owns citizens' assembly? Why not? There are countless examples of successful forms of active participation. Citizen panels, citizen juries, citizen advisory committees, participatory budgeting, participatory planning, participatory mapping, e-participation and citizen science are forms of active public participation that have proven to be successful around the world. Why should we limit those examples as isolated case studies rather than trying to make them the common practice?

The ball is in the court of those who represent us. As we saw recently with the school strikes for climate, many people, especially those from the younger generation, are willing to engage in climate actions. Strong and ambitious policies need to be implemented at national level to create nationwide structures for public participation and incite local decision makers to abandon the status quoand find innovative ways of engaging directly with their constituents. Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges of our century. We desperately need to reduce our carbon emissions and adapt to present and forthcoming impacts of climate change. Decisions aiming at driving these societal changes cannot take place behind closed doors. We need to seize climate change as an opportunity to change profoundly the way our democracy works in Ireland and in Europe.