Ms Dee Forbes:

I thank the Senator for her questions and her observations. It is important to state that we are not sitting here and saying the issue is so complex that we are going to do nothing. I really hope that idea has not come across, because that is not the intention at all. In fact it is quite the opposite. I think what I said was that some of the areas around emissions and carbon are complex subjects and we have to figure out how we can best get that message across to the public.

That is what we are working on right now. Going back to the Senator's point about how we can get actions out to the public, I mentioned that on Monday evening there was a very practical segment on "Claire Byrne Live". There were four contributors talking about how to reduce waste. They all gave examples. That is just one example from Monday night just gone. We are making much bigger efforts in that space but to go back to the point I raised earlier, there needs to be clarity. We all need to be better informed. We need to know that doing X will result in Y. That is where more discussion is needed. What is the message we want to get out there? What are the five things that we can do as a society that will make an impact? How do we communicate that? That is the piece that is missing at the moment.

We all have some bits of information. We know that, as the Senator says, by driving more slowly we can reduce emissions but that is only one topic. There is a lot of talk among kids about animals and what is happening to their habitats. We need clarity around actions we can take to make an impact. We can then get behind them and communicate them. That is where there is a gap at the moment. That is what we are hearing from our viewers and listeners. They are asking to be told what they can do. When we put out programmes around waste management or like that segment on "Claire Byrne Live" we get a huge reaction. The public wants to know what it can practically do that will make an impact. We therefore get behind that.