Dr. Thomas Muinzer:

I thank the Deputy for the question. Earlier, I was emphasising that with the Citizens' Assembly there is a discourse tradition in Ireland in stimulating and developing public engagement. It is such a niche component of a climate change Act that I would encourage legislators and lawmakers in Ireland to think creatively and try to concretise an appropriate approach in the Irish system. Of course, part of doing this can also be usefully informed by other jurisdictions. Public engagement elements within climate change Acts, at least so far as I know as more Acts are emerging all the time but I have looked at quite a number in detail, tend to be relatively undeveloped. Then we get some diamonds in the rough such as the Scottish Act. I do not want to overblow its public engagement element but I set it in context earlier. Initially, the Scottish Act was in the context of the UK pioneering the form of the legislation in 2008 and the Scottish then stood up and said there seemed to be inadequate integration of public engagement and participation elements within the legislation itself, which is different to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Scottish Administration tried to build in some public engagement components, which was very impressive. In terms of what the components say and do we can take a look at the legislation but basically it is predicated around a public engagement strategy. The Scottish Government developed this strategy and needs to keep it under review and update it, which involves a range of measures, in particular reaching out to communities and people in Scotland to raise consciousness about climate change as a serious problem that we all face. It also raises consciousness about how our personal behaviour can contribute to solutions, whether with regard to the energy choices we make or whether we choose to use public transport.

The gold standard at the time I worked on these Acts in detail, which was recently, was the Netherlands Act. The Netherlands does not have a freestanding Act in the way the UK does or that Ireland does in its way. There are other examples of freestanding architecture, such as the 2012 Mexican Act. The Dutch Act is partnered with a climate agreement, which is very important and has substantial elements that interact with the Act. The climate Act sets out a framework for public participation and the climate agreement tries to stipulate what that means in terms of action points and what could and should be done. The Act locks in the notion that a framework exists and operates and the agreement, which can be subject to lower-level policy changes, deals more with the specific elements.

One of the main innovations it introduced that I did not mention earlier, and I do not have the Act in front of me, is that it created a citizens' monitor. This is a particular actor embedded in the legal regime that is required to monitor citizen engagement with climate issues to disseminate information and to consider human behaviour and behavioural change in the context of a low carbon transition. It set up this particular actor to target these types of issues, whereas in the Scottish case it was more of a strategic approach built around a public engagement strategy. In the Irish case we need to take these things and make them our own. It could involve a targeted strategy embedded in the legislation that is updated on a rolling basis. It could even involve the creation of a particular actor or small institution to deal with public interaction and consciousness raising to consider public behaviour. There is a range of options and inspiration from which we can draw.