Professor Barry McMullin:

I will not attempt to answer all the questions but I will take some together. They are useful and insightful.

There has been extended discussion around the taxation system and the possible measures under it. I am not a tax expert but the distributional implications are very important. Deputy Stanley is rightly drawing attention to that. Everything we do in the areas of subsidies or taxes has implications for that and we need a joined-up view of how those things play out. There are other innovative instruments which we have not attempted to use yet, such as the universal basic income or having taxes on certain activities tied to distribution on a population-wide basis. These could be among the issues we might examine.

Deputy Bríd Smith asked about scaling up the lessons from the Citizens' Assembly and trying to get wide societal engagement.

The Citizens' Assembly has demonstrated it can be very effective in engaging a representative set of citizens with access to independent reputable advice, but where they are in charge of the process and get to determine what they discuss, how they discuss it and what questions get asked, and where there is genuine dialogue as opposed to lectures from experts, which do not work. How does one scale it up? One has to spend money. By comparison with the other measures we are talking about, however, this is cheap. We have seen this week in the context of the citizens' dialogue the announcement of the first really substantive event. It is a regional event in Athlone in the midlands later in the summer. That is well and good but that is a region that covers perhaps one third of the country. What we need is something that reaches down virtually into every parish in the country and that gives access to people throughout the country on an extended basis, over a year or 18 months. Perhaps ten times the resources that are currently being contemplated are needed.

In terms of overall national expenditure, what we are talking about is trivial. We are talking a low number of millions of euro over a two-year period. The idea that we would not be willing to spend money on a device to engage the entirety of our society in something that will affect us, future generations and the rest of the world for decades to come is extraordinary. We need to talk about investing the very modest amount of money required to have the staff, in the order of approximately 50, and to engage in administration, training and the hosting of hundreds of events over 18 months or two years. In each case, one is talking not only about relying on people volunteering to participate, because that was not the Citizens' Assembly model. On a town, city or county basis, one can use the Citizens' Assembly model of identifying a random stratified group of representative people and invite them. Of course, they will not all come but one can back off from that. That is a much better way of getting representative participation than relying on the interest of volunteers, as with the first regional meeting. Bearing in mind the lessons from the Citizens' Assembly on how to engage, make engagement bilateral and have access to expert advice, all these things can be scaled up. Admittedly it costs money but the costs are utterly modest by comparison with the scale of what we are talking about and the opportunity to engage our entire society in what is a fundamental generational challenge. I do not believe we should quibble over that.

Deputy Bríd Smith asked about the Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill and the climate emergency Bill. We support both. In both cases, the fundamental physical reality is that we have already available to us on a global basis far more fossil fuels than we can safely use. We must engage in limiting that, both upstream and downstream. There is no point in operating just on the consumption side; one might as well do it on the supply side as well. The Bills speak to that. We support both of them.

A question was asked by Senator Joe O'Reilly on balancing economic development, particularly in respect of jobs, and the transition. He is absolutely right. We very strongly support the need to consider distributional effects, just transition and the inequity within our country, quite aside from the inequity internationally. There are ideas that need to be put into operation. They cover tradeable energy quotas, the fair flying tax and initiatives that tie actions to the activities that are disproportionately responsible for emissions. There are ideas but we just need the will and collective social discussion, through a scaled-up Citizens' Assembly process, to implement them.

I cannot comment on the technical specifics of the North–South interconnector. The committee would have to get EirGrid representatives in to explain that.

With regard to education and training, I come from the education sector. We would love to do more but we need the societal buy-in. In this regard, I must refer again to the scaled-up Citizens' Assembly process. There is no widespread cultural perception in Ireland that there is a major challenge with which we all need to engage, not in terms of replacing light bulbs but in terms of engaging in collective societally agreed and largely political action. Everybody needs to be engaged, however. Greater educational opportunities, among many other goods, would flow from that if we got it right.