Ms Marie Donnelly:

On the subject of communication regarding the transition, the Senator is absolutely right. One thing the council is concerned about, as the Senator rightly said, is to move away from constantly conveying a threat or a frightening story about climate action. We are moving down a trajectory which will deliver a better place. We are not doing this to bring about more negative lives in ten or 20 years. We are doing this so that we will have better lives, with cleaner air, clear water, comfortable homes and quiet cities so that we can sleep at night. From an economic perspective, we will be producing our own energy, be that electricity, liquid fuels or whatever, using our own natural resources. Our land will be being worked in a circular process, where we can use the products of our land for food, bioenergy or nature in a way that will support the land and those managing it in an economic way.

What we are striving for, then, is a better world. There are certain things that we must try to prevent and react to on the way to achieving that goal. Therefore, adaptation will certainly be important. Overall, however, what we are trying to achieve here is a better world. Part of the difficulty in communicating that perspective is that we are moving toward significant societal change by announcing it first. In that regard, let us take the examples of two transitions that societies have gone through in the past. We went through the Industrial Revolution, which fundamentally changed the world as it was known, but nobody announced at the beginning of that transition that we were about to go through it and that the change would involve X, Y and Z and cost however much. The Industrial Revolution happened via evolution and we all moved with it. As a result, we find ourselves in the world we are in today. Equally, we also went through the process of digitalisation. Nobody sat down in 1990 and asked if we could afford to undertake digitalisation, did we really want it and what were the negatives involved in such change. It just happened and that change evolved around us. It cost a lot of money, but it all happened and now we find ourselves in a world where we see the results of digitalisation as being normal. It is part and parcel of our world.

Climate action transition will lead us to a world that we will see as normal. To some extent, however, we are doing this in a planned and upfront way and this is something we are not used to. Therefore, Senator O’Reilly is absolutely right that we need to handle the messaging in this regard. We need to "descarify" it, if I can use that term, and start to explain why we are doing this and what positive developments will emerge from doing it. It is going to be an expensive transition. All these types of transitions were expensive. However, they lead to a better world. I can say that with confidence because we as people will ensure that it will be a better world. Therefore, I have no hesitation in stating that. The Senator is correct that getting that message across in our communications is a challenge.

When I look at results-based schemes, every farmer I have met has been very pro his or her land, as the case may be, the environment and the protection of the land. Virtually every farmer I have ever met has said that he or she is only the caretaker for the next generation. Therefore, farmers are not out to do damage to the land. They want to do things right and to farm in a sustainable way. Again, the Senator is correct, however, that, in just the same way as farming technologies evolved over several years, we are now moving into a space where the technologies of sustainable farming will also advance. That is where we will rely greatly on policies coming from the Department, research coming from Teagasc and on the Teagasc advisers going out and talking to and explaining to farmers what all this is about.

Teagasc's Signpost programme initiative is very good because it involves 100 farms that farmers can visit and see, feel and touch what sustainable farming looks like. They can ask questions about how it works, what it means and what the differences are. That is important, and it will not just be in agriculture but in our daily lives and how we live as well. The role of the public sector, for example, will be important in this regard in respect of buildings. It will be important that we as citizens can see the benefits of retrofitting in buildings that are owned by the public sector. In a way, such buildings are the lighthouses that will allow us to see the benefits in this context. That is also important in respect of communications around this area. Rewarding that kind of initiative is of course the right way to go forward.

Moving on to renewables, we must be careful to say that the resulting energy will be cheaper. It will be cheaper, because, logically, when we look at renewable sources of energy, the investment is all on the capital side. The operational and fuel costs of such operations are very low. Once the capital investment has been allocated, we will then be in a situation where we will see the benefits of having very low operational and maintenance costs. Conversely, operational and maintenance costs in energy generation from fossil fuels are more than 50% of the overall costs.

Therefore, the benefits in this regard are very real and they will manifest in future, but there will need to be expenditure first. We have not done the figures for Ireland, but I have looked at the information that the climate council in the UK has published. It shows levels of investment continuing up to about 2032. It then starts to decline and a surplus is being generated by 2050. We have not done comparative calculations for Ireland, but there is no reason to suppose that we would not have a similar trajectory to what is being forecast in the UK. Therefore, the Senator is right that these technologies are greatly advantageous, not only due to being sustainable but also because they look to be economical and useful to society in the longer term.

Finally, to address the point about ports infrastructure, we must decide what it is we want to have in the ports. We must decide what benefits we are going to derive from the great resource that we have off the west coast. Equally, we must determine how we are going to use it, where we are going to land that power and how we are going to deal with it once we have landed it. This brings us back to what we were talking about earlier with Senator Dooley regarding getting the picture and presenting it page by page so that people can see what it will mean in future.