Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am quite happy to have a debate at any time. That would be helpful. I am not 100% sure about the long-term costs but Deputy Connolly is right that they are very significant and in the scale of billions of euro. I do not believe we are beyond dialogue. A fundamental weakness of environmental groups up to now is that it has been very much about top-down lecturing to people and telling them what they must do, rather than by engaging with communities on the ground. We shall come to this later in respect of another question as I do not want to get into it now. This has been the fundamental weakness up to now. People think that they can deal with this issue at a high level and not engage with people on the ground. We need to engage with people on the ground, to work with communities and to explain to them what needs to be done by every single person doing their own small, little bit. The one thing in which Ireland has been globally successful is in engaging with young people. There is nowhere in the world that has done this better than Ireland has, with its Green-Schools initiative. Yes, we have challenges but the Deputy knows the reality as well as I do. I was not inundated with people talking about climate change during the last general election. I was not inundated with people-----

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