Mr. Eoin Moran:

I will address the questions directed to Met Éireann for which I thank the Deputy. There was a lot in those questions so I will pass over to Ms Evelyn Cusack and Mr. Séamus Walsh for a few of the issues.

The Deputy asked if there were subtle ways in which we can communicate climate information to the public. Part of the job of science is to explain and not just to provide facts, figures and do all the research. It is very important to be able to provide an explanation to the public. With regard to whether Met Éireann has a strategy in strengthening, improving and expanding our climate information proposition to the public we have our ten year strategy. This speaks a lot about ensuring that users, citizens, decision makers, policy makers and politicians are informed so as to be able to make the correct decisions and to achieve the best outcomes for society. This gets to the core of our approach to any services we provide, be they in weather or climate. We focus on providing the most relevant and salient information to allow the best decisions to be made for society. This is supporting impact-based decision making. We must understand the impacts people have to deal with around weather or climate, and then we must provide the most relevant and easily accessible information possible. That is at the core of the philosophy behind the strategy.

On communicating climate information, standing back and looking at where we have come from, our role is to provide the scientific bedrock for the scientific projections we have and to understand the future climate for Ireland over the coming few decades.

That is in place. What we are now doing is building on what we have called our climate services. I have outlined this in my statement. This is to allow people to have access to specialist information so that they can serve themselves and make their own decisions - ordinary citizens, policy makers and specialist users. On top of that layer, we are focusing on improving our communications - enhancing our existing communications so that we can enhance understanding.

In the context of improving citizens' or the Irish public's understanding in a subtle way and answering those questions about burnt grass during the drought in summer or phenological responses taking place as we speak relating to warm conditions, this is an event attribution exercise. For many years, Met Éireann has looked at developing and enhancing our capacity in event attribution. As I mentioned in my statement, we are involved in a state-of-the-art European research attribution service that will deliver on a semi-operational basis attribution information relating to weather events on a regular basis, be it seasonal or monthly. There may be an opportunity to provide a more rapid attribution service to the public, which would answer the type of questions raised by the Deputy. We have seen very useful examples of this during the drought in 2018. The science is now ready to provide that type of information. It is like a newly-developed drug for a particular disease. It is in research and we are moving towards transposing this highly-useful and very exciting and promising piece of information into an operational service, which is a different task entirely.