Professor John FitzGerald:

Looking back, it seems to me the answer was there in 1992. That was the year in which the ESRI published the first work of mine on how we were going to deal with climate action. It was when we started taking this issue seriously. My recommendation at the time was to introduce a carbon tax and support the then EU proposals on carbon taxation. However, Ireland was opposed to those proposals. If they had been implemented then, we would be in a different place in regard to climate, not just in Ireland but in the whole of Europe, and we might have really succeeded. There have been a lot of mistakes along the way.

Going back to when the Climate Change Advisory Council was established in 2016, it took some time before we formulated our ideas and it then took time to get a Government response. The Climate Action (Amendment) Bill 2019 is one of the fruits of a lot of work by the Government and it reflects an increased urgency around climate issues in Irish society. For the first five years of the 2010s, trying to get any attention on climate change was exceptionally difficult. I say this as somebody who has been working in this area for 30 years. However, I think there is now a more receptive audience among the public in Ireland for a commitment to take action. It is true that things could have been done very differently in the past but we are where we are.