Mr. P?draic Fogarty:

I would go back to the Deputy’s summary, which was quite good. I appreciate that people see NGOs as being the doom-mongers all of the time but our experience and, basically, the job of many of us is holding the Government to account for implementing the promises it has made. We know about all of the wriggle room and the get-out clauses and how the system moves along without actually fulfilling the promises on these kinds of things. We have to put ourselves in a kind of overly-pessimistic position and say “Let us say this is passed and we are five years down the line, how are we going to use this to hold the Government and the agents of the State to account for what they say?” If we were to go on the current wording in the heads of the Bill, we would not have a lot to hang onto because, basically, we would not necessarily have to get to the 30% and although we could monitor, we do not have to monitor anything in particular and there is no particular person responsible for enforcing it. In the disaster scenario which we have been used to for 30 years of environmental law, we could end up passing this law and not get a lot out of it in ten years' time.