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

Yes, I understand that was the language used. I disagree fully. It is very important we have bodies like the Press Council, which oversees a code of practice in the print media space. It is a self-regulating area and we could have a useful discussion with the council, especially around its code of practice. Its counterpart the BAI obviously saw fit to come in and has produced a very good submission. The Press Council could have as well. I thank the Deputy.

I will start, if that is okay. We had Dr. Robbins from DCU in last week and I assume he is involved with that five-week climate literacy course, though I do not know. He made many of the points about the challenge in the Irish media space around climate literacy. There have been moves in the right direction but we must go much further. There is a huge challenge across the media space that broadcasters, from the presenters down to the production teams, researchers and so on really understand the challenge we have. We heard last week we are kind of hitting a brick wall when it comes to climate action at the local level. It is my suspicion much of that is down to a failure, perhaps not intentionally, on the part of us all to communicate just how important climate action is and what it means. We are all good at talking about the high-level stuff like the need to keep the temperature increase to 1.5°C globally. We are very concerned about climate impacts all across the world. We see climate impacts locally, whether it is heavy rainfall, drought or whatever it might be. However, amazingly there is a real disconnect between necessary climate action and this bigger understanding of what is happening and it falls to us. I am really happy to see that course is happening. I would love to know who has attended it but our guests do not have to say. More of that would be very useful.

Ms Craig mentioned the consultation that is out at the moment. I am happy to see in the BAI submission that it is asking whether the commercial communications code should include requirements on environmental claims in advertising. I would like to hear more of the authority officials' thoughts on that. The consultation is still open. The challenge around advertising was broached by many members of the committee last week. Advertising is effective and that is why so much money is put into it. A huge figure of something like €1 billion was mentioned as being spent on advertising across the world. It influences purchasing behaviour and many people are making purchasing choices based on what they think are the right reasons. Quite often they are not and they are instead doing the wrong thing. Advertising is confusing the issue for many people and it is about how messages are getting across. I would like to hear more on that. I should add we have invited the Advertising Standards Authority and it has accepted. Representatives will be coming in next week and we will have a further discussion with them on this.