Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

As I said, yes absolutely a climate scientist on the climate issue. I hope that the next council would have a broader balance of expertise.

I know the Senator has left the room but I do not have a perfect answer to the question of migration. It does bring to mind, however, a debate we are having inside the climate movement now about how we dovetail our demands for drastic reductions in emissions with people's concerns about jobs, welfare, livelihood etc. The more we have looked into this the more we have found the answer is some sort of green new deal framing. It was great to see The Irish Times choose climate change as an issue to poll on recently. After the headline figure, however, it juxtaposed climate action with living standards and costs whereas we all know that failing to act on climate change is the much greater risk to livelihoods, incomes and future welfare than not acting on it. The framing of the green new deal that we think is so attractive and positive is that it aims to improve public services as opposed to trading them off with climate action. Improving public services, reducing inequality and fighting discrimination as part of how we go about reducing emissions, whether that is warmer homes for everybody or cheaper more accessible public transport, there are lots of places where there are real benefits to climate action as well as reducing emissions. We need to use that framing. That does not directly address the issue of migration because we know that in all of these populist – to use the polite phrase – outpourings, whether around Brexit, Trump or migration, there are other issues of alienation and feelings of being left behind at their heart. Climate action does give us an opportunity, while addressing an existential threat, to address other burning issues for people and not make it another thing that is being done to them, climate action, that is, as opposed to climate change. We can use something that we are collectively struggling to overcome in a way that actually improves society and has flourishing communities in a zero carbon future.