Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Do they see the need for this within the Constitution, whether the right to a healthy environment or the right of nature? Do they see those rights as a result of the failure of successive Governments to use the legislation that already exists? Therefore, in the absence of that legislation and political prioritisation, is it important that as a State, we have this tool written within the Constitution to ensure we can hold the State to account for its failures? Is that something critical?

This may be a very difficult question to answer but in the absence of all the individual pieces of legislation which have been implemented over the past ten years, if we had either of those articles in the Constitution, what difference would it have made in the past ten years? Can the witnesses point to tangible things at which we could look where we could say we have A, B, and C now because we had this in the Constitution ten years ago, regardless of what the State did with other legislation and enforcement?