Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a major interest in the consultation process. I was taken by the point about how box-ticking consultation can be even more damaging than no consultation at all. That was certainly the experience I had when I worked in Ballymun. That is how local people said they felt about the regeneration project. We do not do consultation very well in Ireland. We are afraid of it. We sort of roll it out and then complain that people have issues. We are seeing it in housing and all the projects with NIMBYism being blamed when actually it is about not talking to communities and people not being prepared to shift position. Even EirGrid and the Irish Wind Energy Association have accepted that they have carried out really poor consultation in the past and have learned from that experience. Can the witnesses outline any examples of where it has been done well in Ireland? Those involved in the BusConnects project seemed to have done a decent job in certain areas in engaging with communities and actually changing the project to reflect what the local people said to them.

I was struck by what Ms Clancy said about being responsible to the Department of Rural and Community Development and the interaction with the local authority. How much of that is compounded by the fact that we also now have the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications and the Department of Transport which are trying to implement most of climate action plan? How aware are they of the role of the PPNs in the consultation?

Ms Clancy stated that just transition is not what it should be. I was looking at analysis of the just transition done in the Bord na Móna regions. Of the €14 million that was spent, only €2 million was attributable directly to benefiting the workers. If we are going to set up a just transition commission, how important is it that we get it right and learn from the mistakes of what we have done in the midlands? It is not a just transition there; we have just diverted funding that would have been going to renovation of churches and things like that and are now calling it a just transition fund when in reality just transition is about the community and the workers.