Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 January 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Carbon Budgets: Discussion (Resumed)

Photo of Pauline O'ReillyPauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have greatly enjoyed the conversation so far. My agreement that the Chairman was being unfair to me was in jest. It has given me more of an opportunity to hear the views on the last issue, in particular, because I was going to bring up a related matter.

The feeling I and all of the social partners here have, and this is important for our report, is that they are all in agreement with the carbon budgets and know and understand the scale of the challenge. Our witnesses earlier on in the week also know the scale of the challenge and believe this is what we must do now. We had political consensus, more or less, on the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act and we have political and social consensus, in some respects, when it comes to the actual budgets, but different actions have to be taken. It is very important as we move to the next phase around the sectoral targets that we ensure we are bringing everybody on board. Our witnesses have given us very good indications of what can done around aligning the policy with dialogue because that is something Mr. Coghlan and Mr. Joyce have spoken about. People get on board when they feel their voices are being heard. That has to be meaningful.

Is there a place here for a national dialogue that goes beyond the national dialogue with Government and is not the national dialogue that happens on the airwaves, in our newspapers and on our social media? We are all responsible but so are the media and journalism and it can be too easy to pit people against each other. I take Mr Rushe’s point on board because it is critical. It can be too easy to pit people against each other and political party against political party, but we have all bought into this now. Is there a place for the media to get on board as well and not to pit people against each other, because there is no environmentalist I know who believes the problem is farmers, and there is no politician here who does not understand it is difficult for different sectors? How do we ensure other sectors of society outside of ourselves here get on board to ensure we are not pitting people against each other as this progresses over the next year, as it will, and to ensure we do not say so-and-so is doing more than so-and-so, because there are always trade-offs?

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