Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, I welcome you all to the Chamber and thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this very important topic. I also welcome those in the Gallery to the Chamber.

By way of introduction, my name is Brian Leddin and I am a Green Party Deputy. I was elected to the Dáil in 2020 and I have been Chair of this committee since September 2020. The joint committee is an all-party committee made up of 14 members, nine of whom are Deputies and five of whom are Senators. Last year, Ireland passed into law one of the most ambitious decarbonisation pathways in the world, and this committee had significant input into the law. Our climate Act requires us to reduce our carbon emissions by over 50% within a single decade. This ambitious path ahead will be extremely challenging, but the path to get here has been inspiring because our story started with our people.

Due to the immense work of grassroots campaigners, a Citizens' Assembly on climate change was formed. Ninety-nine men and women, who were randomly selected, listened to and engaged with experts and produced a groundbreaking list of recommendations, and that went on to inform the legislation we passed in the Oireachtas.

Our story continues and our people will be at its heart. This committee believes it is particularly important we continue this dialogue with young people, as the committee recognises the key role youth will play in tackling climate change, and this is the reason we have organised this event today. Today marks the first engagement with young people and it is the committee's plan that this will be the first of many such engagements.

The path ahead will be extremely challenging, as I said, and we should be under no illusions about that. Greenhouse gases are interwoven into every aspect of our lives, including the food we eat and how we travel, heat our homes and generate our electricity. They are part and parcel of the technological revolution from the earliest days of the revolution two centuries ago right up to the present day.

All change is difficult, even the smallest of changes. We need vast changes to our society, economy and how we live our lives if we are to solve this existential crisis. We should be under no illusions as to how difficult this will be and we will need everybody in the Chamber and across politics and society to work hard to solve this. It will be very difficult, but we have no choice. We look forward to listening to youth perspectives on climate challenges today and having a worthwhile engagement with every one of you.

Before we begin the session, I have to read out the standard note on parliamentary privilege. I remind everybody in the Chamber that there is a long-standing parliamentary practice that you should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. If your statements are defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will ask you to discontinue your remarks and you must comply with any such direction. We normally do not have a problem here, so do not worry about that.

I will now call on each speaker to make a contribution. We will begin with our participants from Comhairle na nÓg.