Mr. Ois?n Coghlan:

I thank the Chair, Deputies and Senators for meeting us today. It is really important for this committee to have an opportunity to think about and scrutinise these two important policy documents that form part of the European governance of climate and energy policy. The NLTS has a role in the Irish national policy directly under the climate law itself. We are sorry for creating more work for this committee because we are conscious that it has done tremendous work over the course of this Oireachtas on the evolution and reform of climate governance in Ireland. To some degree, the fact that these documents have not had as much scrutiny as they deserve is a reflection of how the national processes are now so dominant and robust. We would argue that what used to be the only processes, which were the European ones, have been slightly neglected by the Department, the Government and equally then by Parliament and by stakeholders like ourselves. The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, the Environmental Pillar and EJNI, however, have been working away in the background trying to understand how these processes should work, how they should align with all the other documents and policies that the committee is aware of, particularly the process that is supposed to happen around public participation. Ireland is currently lacking in all of these, not just by Irish standards, but in the context of the European Union. We are not making the most of these documents or of the opportunity to meet the requirements that exist for us to do what is necessary, particularly around the NLTS. The NECP is somewhat analogous, although it has other aspects, to the climate action plan. It has the same time horizon. It has some things that are really important as well, in that it explicitly asks us to look at other dimensions like just transition and energy poverty, which could be made more of. As with all of these things, of course, because it is done to a similar format across Europe, when it is done well it gives us a consistent way of benchmarking and comparing ourselves with our peers.

The LTS has another function, which I would say is in a sense a bigger missed opportunity, although others might disagree, which is that it has the 30-year time horizon. We have obviously been very focused on the need to get going on meeting the targets the Oireachtas has set for 2025 and 2030, but we have to think beyond that. The LTS is where we should be having the big debates about what cement, agriculture or car-based transport look like in 2050, or indeed 2040 if we are talking about decarbonising electricity at pace. We have missed a trick in not having those debates between stakeholders and parliamentarians and, ideally, with the public before we submit our LTS. We wrote asking the committee to bring the Minister in to look at how this can be done better, but we are very happy to be here today to share our thoughts on that. I am going to hand over now to Dr. Brennan, who is going to talk about the process side in particular.