Mr. Andrew Jackson:

On the question of a long-term strategy, as members will know the Supreme Court quashed the 2017 national mitigation plan which the court said had to have a horizon to 2050. We are in a vacuum period now where we have no plan with that horizon. There is a need for a new mitigation plan and-or long-term strategy. How long is it going to take to pass this legislation and have the concept of a long-term strategy? Clearly, a legal vacuum exists. There has to be a plan, under the 2015 Act, and there is not one at the moment.

As I said in my opening statement, I am concerned about section 4(7). Section 4(6) of the Act replicates the language on the basis of which Friends of the Irish Environment was successful in the Supreme Court. One needs to specify the manner in which it is proposed to achieve the 2050 objective. That is then supplemented by section 4(7) of the Bill, of which I have serious concerns about its impact. Could it be said, if a long-term strategy was challenged relying on the Supreme Court's judgment, that the law has moved on? We have since legislated and now we also have section 4(7) that states, "The national long term climate action strategy may include the following." So, provided that I have made a strategy that includes those three things then that is legally compliant. In other words, this layer is on top of the Supreme Court's judgment. I suggest that section 4(7) is deleted or amended to be without prejudice to the obligation in section 4(6).

There is an interesting question on the relationship between the Bill's long-term strategy and the EU law's long-term strategy. Section 4(8) states, in preparing the one under the Bill, the Government must "have regard to" the one under EU law, which has an annexe that sets out a very detailed range of things that need to be included. Why does section 4(7) have a different and less comprehensive list? We must be careful to preserve the import and effect of the Supreme Court's judgment.

Senator Higgins asked about language.

I absolutely think there is a need to differentiate and not have everything under this weak "have regard to" provision. There was a debate on the 2015 Act at the time on whether this should happen and there was an argument that "have regard to" should be strengthened to "comply with". The argument against this was there might be mutually contradictory provisions and people could not necessarily comply with all of them. That change was only narrowly defeated in the Seanad in a 14 to 12 vote. This time around, if we have a lengthy list of things, it might be interesting to look at it to differentiate and pick out, as the Senator said, those where the obligation ought to be that we act consistently with the provisions. Interestingly, the heads of the 2019 Fine Gael Bill adopted the principle of public bodies being consistent with obligations in the context of local authority plans, whereby the local authorities were required to act consistently with matters included in quite a long list in section 4(9) of the heads of the Bill. The principle is there. It is another thing that has been weakened between the heads of the 2019 Bill and this Bill. Now the obligation on local authorities is just to take account of the matters and not act consistently with them.

On the question of the Climate Change Advisory Council, my suggestion is to broaden the areas of expertise. I know Dr. Áine Ryall also made this point last week, with regard to having legal expertise on it. This is very important because this area is underpinned by the UN framework convention, the Paris Agreement and rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. It would be very important to have legal expertise. I also suggest that expertise in the broad field of just transition would be very important, as would representation for youth and future generations. Committee members might ask how future generations can be represented in an organisation such as the Climate Change Advisory Council. Several countries have created an institution called the ombudsperson for future generations, whose specific role it is to be the voice for future generations. Of course, all being well, the population of future generations of Ireland will be much larger than the population today and those future generations ought to have a voice in the room.