Dr. Robert Mooney:

To address the issue of delivery, the function of the annexe of actions in the climate action plan is to set out step by step and action by action how the policy ambition set out in the plan is going to be delivered. Again, that sits with a different unit and I cannot speak to the details of it. The purpose of it is to set out how exactly we are going to achieve our key policy ambitions. In addition to that and in recognition of the need for urgency, the Minister, as I am sure members are aware, established six cross-Government delivery task forces in some key areas, including citizen engagement and climate literacy, which is the one I actively work on. The purpose of them is to look at which actions in the plan need most urgent attention and how we bring not only Departments but other agencies together to discuss the practical realities of delivering them and to accelerate the delivery of those actions. I say that to give a programmatic point of view on the rest of the issues raised there.

I will hand over to Ms Gilmartin in a moment but on the dialogue, I reiterate that last year we identified populations we considered vulnerable in the transition to carbon neutrality. That is a long-winded way of saying it, but it included people with disabilities, people living in coastal communities, people living in rural Ireland, older people, younger people, members of the Travelling community

etc. We had a series of focus groups. Some of that was exploratory, in that it was the first year of the national dialogue in its entirety and the full programme. We learned a lot from the work we did last year and as I said we are progressively developing and improving the means and methods of engagement with those populations, as well as the identification of other populations vulnerable to the transition that we may not have realised. Building on the work and the governance structures Ms Gilmartin has established around the SDGs, as part of the national dialogue we have a structure that includes other Departments and State agencies we engage with regularly in an interdepartmental working group. They give us insights and input into how we should engage and what key groups we should be engaging with in that way. Thus, we are building a more systematic programme of outreach this year.

As to the impact of the calls to act we received from those groups, we do not just prepare reports discussing what was said and what we heard, but we identify key calls to action per sectoral area and present that back to those policy leads in a timely fashion to feed into the annual development of the climate action plan. As far as the dialogue goes, our function is to bring those insights together, present it back to the people developing policies and actions in those areas and say this is what we heard from these different groups and these are the challenges and the barriers for them to delivering climate action. As we have clearly stated from the last few years' work we have done, people are aware. There is nearly 100% awareness of it. People are eager to get involved, as is clearly demonstrated today, but people are struggling a little with where and how to start taking actions and how to access action. That is the space we are moving into in 2023.

Some of the SDG issues were mentioned as well, so I hand over to Ms Gilmartin on those.