Dr. Tadhg O'Mahony:

A number of recommendations that are already in the citizens' assembly report speak to some of the issues we are touching on. No. 5 is a plan for the benefit of biodiversity and people. No. 21 is a strategic approach. Dr. O'Hagan-Luff mentioned No. 31, the rights of nature. There has been a debate in the literature for some time that has been pretty much resolved at this stage. If we just focus on indicators, often we do not change anything. If we perhaps change the conversations at the margin, they can be really beneficial if we put them into a strategic approach so that things flow. For example, do we enumerate the rights of nature in the Constitution? What is our strategic approach? Where is our funding coming for this and what is the magnitude of that? Are we actually changing policy or are we just changing how we speak about it a little? That comes through in the citizens' assembly report and recommendations.

For me, it speaks a little bit to the question from Deputy Paul Murphy as well. If we only rely on pricing and accounting, it might be infeasible that we would actually get anywhere. Parts of the current system do respond to that, so we should include that in an overall strategic approach and then we hit it from multiple angles. Systemic problems need systemic solutions. Finance and accounting pricing is one of them but we also need to think about the legal policy frameworks, the incentives and the strategic approach.