Dr. Ciara Brennan:

I can take the first question, which is a question we have also been asking. What is the reason for the delay? On one level, there has been a whole raft of new EU regulations. There was the review of the effort sharing regulation and a whole array of updates to EU’s climate policy in general, and that is difficult for member states to get to grips with. I understand that is an administratively heavy burden for Departments to manage. Regarding the NECP, we were five months late, but regarding the long-term strategy, we were three years late. That begs the question of whether it is just a delay in the administration in terms of preparing the report or whether the delay is because we do not have those answers yet. Is it because conversations about those policy choices have not been had to the degree that should have happened by now? It speaks to the question about the potential for a commission on future generations as well. We are struggling to deal with the question of what the future will look like. What is the long-term strategy? What do we envisage that looking like and how to get there? The questions about the long-term issue and the delay are profound and speak to the need to have a national conversation about this in a much more robust way.

With the NECP, I understand there is a need to implement all of the new EU regulations, the updates and the whole body of work that needs to be done, but all the other member states managed to get theirs in on time. The NECPs that have been submitted are of different qualities but the fact that ours was very late and very weak is telling.

With regard to what needs to happen, there is probably a capacity issue. Regarding the issue of synchronising the domestic climate planning processes and the EU ones, there is much rationalisation that could occur that would make that much more straightforward. It would make it easier for everybody and it would make it easier for us to respond to it. We had, for example, consultations on the domestic processes happening at the same time as the EU processes. I do not know any organisation that has enough capacity to respond to public participation exercises when they occur but, equally, it is the Department as well. Imagine how much work that takes. It is just about counting things in different ways over different periods of time. If there was a rationalisation or a better alignment of those, that would simplify the whole process.