Dr. Orla Kelleher:

On that question of whether there has been a failure regarding legislation and if this constitutional referendum is necessary as a result of that, I would flip the question. For example, this committee has done fantastic work already on the climate Bill. A particular advantage of the constitutionalisation of environmental rights is how it can ensure and prevent roll-back in really progressive legislation that has built up a huge amount of political consensus. In additional, a lot of environmental laws regulate specific environmental resources or problems, whereas constitutional environmental rights are about guaranteeing broad individual or collective rights to a certain level of environmental quality.

The Act is a very important safety net where the law has not regulated a particular area.

I want to emphasise the scope of this. A very important part of the exercise of thinking out how the right should be designed is that we are quite clear that it should include a safe and stable climate. This is a very important facet. Whether the right includes this has come up a lot in international climate mitigation. A very important task for the committee would be to clarify that a right to a healthy environment includes a safe and stable climate.