Ms Sadhbh O'Neill:

I thank Deputy O'Rourke. Stop Climate Chaos is not formally part of the environmental pillar, which has a more formal opportunity from time to time to be engaged in policy-making and has been engaged in the past through the Food Vision 2030 discussions around agriculture and agrifood strategy. Unfortunately, and Mr. Kelly can maybe speak to it, the experience was very difficult and the representative withdrew.

Generally speaking, environmental groups are very much sidelined in any discussions around land use and agriculture policy. For example, AgClimatise committed to setting up a stakeholder group with non-governmental organisations, NGOs and scientists included, but that has not happened yet to the best of my knowledge. Various other sectoral strategy groups have been set up instead to look at the climate aspects of dairy and beef, for example. To be honest, the policy seemed to exclude science and NGOs as much as possible, which has led to a kind of siloing effect in the conversation. It is very difficult to get opportunities to actually engage with farming representatives and State bodies on matters of critical environmental and climate policy.

As I mentioned in my opening statement, there is an opportunity in phase 2 of the land use review to do this stakeholder engagement properly, and to do it at a community level, in rural communities, and through citizens' assemblies. We also have the recommendations coming soon from the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, which should feed into the work of this committee and other committees. It is about setting up not just one conversation, but many conversations at different scales which enable us to get into the detail.

The other thing is that I suspect we will need to be very patient with this; there is not going to be an 18-month conversation leading to an agreement. It is going to be an evolving conversation because it is not just about what we do for 2030. It is about what we do for 2050 and before that.