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

I am very interested in this area. The witnesses might think about the question I am going to ask and come back to me later with a response. The climate action plan is a top-down approach. It is the way the State does things. It states all these different things in all these different areas must be done if we are to achieve the target we have set ourselves in a short timeframe. What I have heard from the witnesses, however, is that there is a distinct lack of research capacity across the local government system, including in the PPNs. Even if they were, therefore, to take on the role of an alternative climate action plan, they could not do it because they simply do not have the capacity to come up with something, to get into the numbers etc. An example would be finding out what County Clare's responsibility is regarding the number of megatons of carbon that must be reduced by 2030. It would not be possible to say because this would require a huge body of work.

The other point is that the urgency is so great we probably do need to lean on the State because it has access to this information. There is probably a happy middle ground here where the State does have a critical role, but it needs to enhance the capacity of the communities and the PPNs in this regard to help it achieve this goal.

There is a tension and conflict there that is not easily resolved. I will not ask the representatives to answer that now but to think about it because Senator Higgins has been waiting in her office and I am sure she is keen to contribute.