Professor Ian Walker:

I would like to briefly add to both responses. I agree with the previous speakers to a large extent. In terms of public funding, it becomes difficult in the context of the scale of media funding. I believe Ireland's advertising budget is over €1 billion per year, a substantial part of which will come from consumptive and extractive industries. Given its scale, I do not see how State funding could ever hope to replace that. It might be worth doing some kind of audit to assess how much of the media's advertising revenue comes from industries that would be challenged through climate messaging.

As for education, I very much agree with Dr. Lunn for two reasons. There is the very simple reason that evidence suggests that individual education has limits. I agree also with what Dr. Lunn said in his opening statement about our being far better off exploring structural shifts rather than individual shifts. I back that up from just a pragmatic, common-sense perspective. As to what we are trying to do with education, I understand that the population of Ireland is around 5 million people. If we take an educational approach, we are effectively saying we should address this problem by persuading 5 million people individually, whereas it might be far more effective to persuade one or two people who have influence over the environment within which those other people act. We could therefore get more bang for our buck by persuading the right people rather than the fairly hopeless job of trying to persuade 5 million individuals.