Dr. Tom Boland:

I do not want to take the time up disagreeing with you, Chair. We may say that we need the money and we both agree that we need less pollution and more wealth generation. That is very simple, but the problem is that currently growth leads to increased environmental impact, so we do need to think of some way of organising degrowth. Hopefully it will not have a negative impact on living standards. Living standards in Ireland are reasonably high, but on the whole they are environmentally unsustainable, as they are in many parts of the world. The actual additional happiness and even the additional years lived in the life in terms of health are subject to the law of diminishing returns. The richer we get, we do not get to be much happier or we do not live much longer and we pollute the planet more. We know this. In a way, we have got to figure out a way forward that is not all about growth.