Dr. Niall Farrell:

I have a few thoughts on some of the points. When it comes to lorries or perhaps boats transporting fossil fuels, we have a few of them in Ireland. The Deputy raised an interesting point in that it gives the perception. The perception is important and it feeds into our trust in public representatives. When it comes to climate change, the biggest impediment is getting political buy-in and getting people behind these policies. The Deputy raised the very interesting point that this is a real impediment.

Retrofitting was mentioned. Maybe there are costs in the first year or two, but the outcome over a 20- or 30-year period is what matters. In the long term, if there is a net benefit, it can be a net benefit in terms of costs and comfort. There is research to suggest that people have the sort of present bias that they are more aware of future benefits. That could be an impediment to climate change.

One other interesting point that was mentioned was on wind turbines. A very good paper was done in Maynooth University. There is a very good geography department there. One thing the people there analysed is what sites would be available for wind turbines if there was a certain setback distance between the wind turbine and where houses are allowed to be. Because we have such a distributed population in Ireland, if it is increased by any marginal amount, the sites that will be available are effectively zero, essentially. The lesson there is that if we want to deploy onshore wind, there will be a case where it encroaches near somebody's house. The solution lies in looking at how to ensure that person is looked after and made whole if there is some impact on his or her household. That is a very important question and one that needs to be answered and a discussion that needs to be had. Is it a case of local buy-in in the community? I do not know what the answer is there, but it is something that has to be satisfactory to the householder. It is an important question.

The final point that is very interesting, which was raised by Deputy Durkan, relates to food. I do not know the solution, but if it is the case there is a greater risk of food price increases and it is going to affect household welfare, perhaps we do need to look at the portfolio of locally grown produce versus imported produce. I do not know if it would change a whole lot. It would definitely be a worthwhile piece of research to do to. Given the new risks we have seen in the past year with the war in Ukraine, its effect on wheat prices and all the other knock-on effects, it is something that is definitely worth looking into.