Professor Barry McMullin:

Committee members will know that they also have a written submission from Dr. Andrew Jackson of University College Dublin on the legal implications of the climate Act, in particular, that Act's clear stipulation that the budgets have to be consistent with the Paris Agreement, in effect, above all. Looking at the Act, the other things are "to the extent feasible" but consistency with the Paris Agreement comes above that in the Act. That is the first test for me. In reading the council's technical report and, again, I am not a member of the council and I am not speaking on its behalf, it seems it did it the other way around. It used other considerations and then assessed consistency with the Paris Agreement. As I said, the council's Paris test falls short in paying attention to historical responsibility, but it has not elaborated on that so I am not sure where the grounds of the disagreement would be. It did not make any adjustment for emissions from international aviation and shipping, which, again, is legally problematic in terms of Paris consistency.

If the budgets are reduced further, what does that translate into when it comes to societal impact? There is no doubt that the disruption to society would be greater. I will make no pretence that the level of challenge on the council's budgets is already very significant. If the budgets are reduced further, that will represent a higher level of challenge, but it will be nothing compared with the challenge faced by poor and vulnerable people around the world today, who are exposed to greater climate risks due to our disproportionate emissions, and our own children in future years. We have to grasp this nettle of reconciling our own immediate preferences for an easier transition locally in Ireland, given our comfortable lifestyle at present. We would all like an easier transition but, as against that, we just do not have the time. We have responsibilities to our children, future generations and poor and vulnerable people all over the world who are directly affected by our actions.

We recoil from this here in Ireland because of our history but it is a form of tacit neocolonialism. We are exploiting an atmospheric commons, a global commons, that belongs to all people of the earth equally but we are exploiting it disproportionately just because we can. I do not think that is defensible.