Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach for accepting a delegation of the environmental movement yesterday - Trócaire, Environmental Pillar, the Jesuits, Friends of the Earth and the Climate Gathering - and allowing it to make a presentation last night on the national dialogue on climate change. I hope I am not speaking out of class here, but the Taoiseach's comments in that meeting in which he recognised that we need to create a national movement were exactly right. If we are to achieve the scale of change to which we are due to sign up later this week - I hope, on Thursday - regarding the Paris Agreement, the scale of the change we need to make is so immense that we really need first and foremost to get our people to understand and get behind it. We need to do this as set out in the partnership document for Government by engaging in a completely different way with the people by putting the question to them as to how they can help and get involved.

Further to that meeting last night, there was one item that was not discussed, which I want to have the chance to reiterate. It is very important, and I would be interested to hear the Taoiseach's views on it. I refer to the carrying out of what is set out in the programme for Government document when it states that part of this dialogue must involve the media not just reporting on the events, but also using new, innovative, online and other creative techniques to be part of the debate so that they too start to get a different and better understanding as to how the story we will tell to create this national movement for action on climate change will take place. I am interested to hear the Taoiseach's views as to whether he thinks it makes sense to engage not just as a reporter, but also as a participant in a way, in the variety of different dialogues I believe we need to take place as part of a national climate dialogue.

I think the understanding coming from the environmental movement that presented last night is that it needs a special steering group at the centre of government, not just one involving Government, but also possibly the NESC secretariat, the climate expert group and the people involved in the national planning framework and in the review of the capital plan. Does the Taoiseach agree that such an approach, which does not rely on just one Department that may not have the resources either in budget or staff terms to manage the scale of the dialogue we need to take place, is needed? I am interested to hear his thoughts, further to the presentations made last night, as to how such an organisational structure needs to be got right first, with a view to living out - which is a good articulation in the programme for a partnership Government - how a different sort of national conversation needs to take place on these sorts of critical long-term strategic issues for the State.

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