Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The commission will follow through on the commitments we have made in the programme for Government. I believe the people we are approaching to be on the commission are first class. I am very confident they will be able to do a very good job, but we need to get them approved by Government first and so on. That process is under way.

I take Deputy Costello's point that we need to plan properly for a response to adaptation as well as mitigation when it comes to climate change. Part of the adaptation challenge is to put the emergency-response capacity in place to protect people and protect ecosystems and resources from more extreme weather patterns, which are already taking place. We are not talking about the future anymore; we are also talking about the present. We have seen the involvement of the Defence Forces in a much more structured and efficient way in recent years. Local authorities are now much more willing to reach out and seek assistance from the Defence Forces at a much earlier stage when they are put under pressure. That will be part of the commission's work, but it has many other elements of work.

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