Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In his career, my father spent eight years in the Upper House, so it is a privilege to be able make an address in this Chamber today on such an important issue. I sat on the Joint Committee on Climate Action and, hopefully, will sit on a permanent version chaired by the Co-Chairman, Deputy Naughton.

I welcome the witnesses' presentations. I went on a great journey of discovery during the eight months that I sat on the committee. My knowledge of the parameters and facets of this issue was minuscule. The witnesses are preaching to the converted as regards the necessary timelines and actions.

I was struck by the question of consultation and building coalitions raised in one of the presentations. That is paramount to our success. If we do not build a coalition and agreement across all parties and sectors of society, there will be a knee-jerk kickback. Be it political or something else, it will be a "Them" and "Us" response that could set us back ten or 15 years or even a generation. We do not want that.

Our committee viewed public consultation as paramount. I was interested to hear about how an industry coalition was built on the ground in Germany, but Ireland needs to go to an even more micro level. Since we have a smaller population, we are a more integrated society. For example, managing directors of companies have siblings who are farmers or teachers. As such, we wanted to propose town hall-type meetings that would involve peer-to-peer and community learning involving people from all sectors of society - young and old, farmers and doctors, unemployed people, those in receipt of disability payments and so on. They would educate one another from the bottom up or at the same level. Politicians taking a top-down approach will not work. Europe and America have kicked back at such an approach. We must alter our communication style. That will be paramount in coalition building. It will require maturity, not only from people, but also from political parties. The latter must take a step back from the politics and build a coalition of consensus to drive this through. I would be interested in hearing more about the coalition building that happened in Germany.