Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
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I thank the witnesses for their contributions. Sometimes when we see something down on paper we say "Why not just do this?" and "Why not just do more consultation and do it better?" or "Why not just put the resources into mapping how we get to X, Y or Z?" The answer in my experience is that it is almost always politics . We have done the political equivalent of pushing a boulder up a hill to get to this point. It is always really helpful to members when we have witnesses in who say, "Why not do X,Y and Z?" because then it pushes it back on those who are maybe not as supportive as the people in this room to give an answer to that. When it comes to climate and nature we are fighting for resources, almost always with people who do not prioritise this to the same extent we do.

I absolutely agree with the points regarding consultation and about doing consultation better, especially with young people. It cannot be a tick-box exercise because people are not fooled by that. They know when they are not being properly consulted. I agree with Mr. Coghlan. I do not believe one can get everybody to agree on the measures that need to be taken. There is no case of everybody being 100% on board because proper consultations were done. We would never get there but we still need to take the action. We need to make sure that people buy into the process and, at least, that they have had their say and what they have said has been taken on board.

Going back to Ms O'Neill's point, how fearful is she that politically we will start going backwards on a more global scale? The worry I have is not possibly over some of the processes but, rather, over the fact that the progress we have made could go backwards unless we are very careful.