Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

In doing so, I am moving that the Bill, entitled an Act to provide for the establishment of a body to be known in the Irish language as an Coimisiún um Ghlúnta sa Todhchaí or in the English language as the Commission for Future Generations for the purpose of reporting to the Government in relation to the establishment of an Office of Ombudsman for Future Generations and to provide for related matters, be read a Second Time.

Anyone who has ever had a hangover will understand a little about borrowing happiness from the future. Likewise, anyone who has saved for the deposit on a house, is making plans for pension provision or is saving towards children's college costs knows something about planning for the future. They also know that decisions they take today have the power to impact their future well-being and the well-being of those close to them. We understand instinctively on a human scale how this applies to us and our families, but do we adequately apply long-term thinking on a societal scale in our businesses, planning and politics or are we too often drawn to tackling the current crisis, sometimes in a manner inconsistent with our longer term goals?

This kind of thinking has been extrapolated to form a philosophical school of thinking led by a Scottish philosopher, William MacAskill, which is known as longtermism. Like most kinds of philosophical thinking, it does not always survive contact with the real world and can be problematic in its most extreme conclusions. Simply put, it can be encapsulated in the following three sentences.

Future people count. There could be a lot of them. We, today, through the decisions that we make, can make their lives better.

The issue of climate change brings this kind of thinking into sharp focus. How will future generations regard and judge us when they look at the climate consequences we are locking into their future world? The carbon emissions that I create today will still be in the atmosphere hundreds of years from now, trapping heat, intensifying droughts and heatwaves and raising sea levels.

The same applies to our treatment of the natural world. The curlew's call is becoming rarer around Tramore, where I live.

My sons have never heard a cuckoo. I have never heard a corncrake. Future skies, rivers and oceans will be quieter and emptier places, unless we radically change what we are doing today, and future generations will be immeasurably the poorer for it. Extinction is permanent and cannot be remediated.

This kind of approach can and should be applied to other challenges facing our society, such as how we respond to demographic pressures, how we deal with issues of migration in an increasingly unstable world, how we vindicate the sustainable development goals, how we revive and rebuild trust in our democratic institutions, how we plan for digital disruption and many more matters besides. None of these questions can be resolved within a single electoral cycle. All require cathedral thinking and an acknowledgement that these are long-term projects or goals, which we hope to realise for the sake or benefit of future generations.

Our democracy, and by extension our State, struggles to take account of this type of long-term thinking. This is for two main reasons. Let us examine the first proposition of the three I used to describe long-termism - namely, that future people count. In a very literal sense, in our democracy, they do not. Future people cannot speak, advocate or, crucially, vote. People aged under 18, which is the future generation we can meet and know, cannot vote. To state the obvious, any electoral strategy aimed at people who cannot vote is doomed to failure. In the strict electoral sense, these people do not count, yet morally and ethically we can feel that is not true. They must count and must matter, yet our political system fails to adequately capture that. That is a failure the Bill aims to address.

Second, all of us sometimes struggle to make decisions that align our long-term interests with our short-term interests, be that when to start a pension or open that second bottle of wine. Our democracy and electoral cycle tend to create conditions that reward promises and decisions with a short time horizon. Let us look at the current debates happening ahead of our local and European campaigns. How many candidates are outlining a 30-year vision of where they want to go in our society versus how many are offering, honestly or otherwise, quick fixes and instant solutions? At the ballot box, which of those two approaches is most likely to be rewarded? This makes planning for the long term for future generations extremely challenging.

A few countries have begun to take steps towards incorporating more long-term thinking into their decision-making process. The Welsh Government in particular is leading the way. It created an office of future generations commissioner, which is an independent and well-resourced office with the stated goal to act as guardian of the ability of future generations to meet their needs and encourage public bodies to take greater account of the long-term impact of the things they do. The work of this office is underpinned by ground-breaking legislation, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. I first encountered this work when I met the inspirational Jane Davidson, who championed this legislation during her time as minister for the environment in the Welsh Government. In my conversations with her, it became clear to me how an approach of this kind could be highly beneficial to our politics in Ireland by meaningfully stitching our well-being framework and our commitments to sustainable development goals into a legislative framework.

However, I must be honest in saying that the ambition of the Bill does not match that Welsh legislation. Such a piece of work would be well beyond the resources of any individual TD's office to address through a Private Members' Bill. Instead, this Bill is intended to be the first step along the road towards that end goal, whereby we fund and resource a commission for future generations, along the lines of the Commission on Pensions or the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, to fully explore the potential of creating an office of ombudsman for future generations in the Irish context. This Bill will establish an independent commission for future generations to consider and report within 12 months on how best to set up an office of ombudsman for future generations in Ireland. The proposed commission for future generations could also make recommendations on a number of areas, including measurement of the progress of the overall well-being of our society; how best to ensure best practice among public bodies and Departments while adhering to the principle of sustainable development; and the potential role of an Oireachtas joint committee on future generations.

Many of the sections in the Bill are technical in nature and set out the necessary administrative structures needed to underpin the founding, reporting and dissolution of such a commission. I do not propose to dwell on them here. The first of the sections more pertinent to our debate this afternoon is section 3, which sets out the functions of the commission, specifying that it should have regard to the well-being framework as well as any intergenerational issues, including the climate and biodiversity emergencies, the provision of care to children and older people, demographic changes, and intergenerational income and wealth distribution.

Section 5 sets out various criteria for how members of the commission should be appointed, taking into account experience and knowledge of areas such as climate science, ecology, economics, intergenerational equity, public health, culture and the arts, community development, spatial planning and some other areas. It also stipulates that the Minister should ensure, as far as is practicable, that a balance be struck in the composition of the commission to take account of gender, age, ethnic and cultural background, and speakers of the Irish and English language. Is mian liom dul siar ar feadh nóiméid ar an gceist seo, is í sin ceist na Gaeilge agus an gá atá le saineolas sna healaíne agus sa chultúr a chuimsiú i struchtúr an choimisiúin seo. Is minic a labhair mé faoin easnamh atá sna réimsí seo laistigh dár gcreat folláine féin. Tá samplaí maithe feicthe againn sa Nua-Shéalainn agus sa Bhreatain Bheag ar conas is féidir na táscairí seo a ionchorprú go húsáideach i gcreat folláine chun an rannchuidiú dearfach a d’fhéadfadh a bheith acu ar luacháil teanga agus cultúr araon a chur san áireamh le folláine daoine. Is dóigh go gcaillfimid go leor amach as gan iad a bheith san áireamh agus leanfaidh mé de bheith ag moladh an t-athrú seo a dhéanamh inár gcreat.

Section 15 is perhaps the most consequential section because it details the proposed output of the commission established. It specifies that the commission shall report not later than 12 months after the appointment of its members. Within that report, the commission should make recommendations on a number of matters specified in section 15(4) as follows:

(a) the progress of the overall well-being of society while adhering to the principle of sustainable development,

(b) the collection of data and measurable parameters in relation to well-being in order to measure the progress of the overall well-being of society,

(c) the predictions of likely future trends in the economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being of the State,

(d) how to ensure best practice amongst public bodies and government departments in their practices and actions to progress

the well-being of society while adhering to the principle of sustainable development,

(e) the potential role of a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Future Generations,

(f) the adequacy and effectiveness of legislation and practices in the State relating to the principle of sustainable development,

(g) an assessment of how public bodies can—

(i) better safeguard the ability of future generations to meet future needs, and (ii) take greater account of the long-term impact of such bodies practices and actions,

(h) how an Ombudsman for Future Generations could advise, assist and oversee the measurable progress of public bodies and government departments in relation to the dimensions of the Well-being Framework, (i) how a Joint Committee on Future Generations could scrutinise and propose amendments to legislation that may impact the well-being of future generations,

(j) encouraging best practice amongst public bodies in taking steps to meet well-being goals and objectives in accordance with the principle of sustainable development,

(k) setting national well-being goals and objectives and the indicators by which such goals and objectives should be measured,

(l) such other information in such form as the Commission thinks fit or the Minister may request.

It also places an obligation on the Minister, should he or she not accept the recommendation of the commission, to set out the Minister's reasons for not accepting same within one month of being given a copy of those recommendations. These are the principal provisions of the Bill as I see them.

As stated, this legislation is intended as a stepping stone rather than a destination. It is a way of meaningfully resourcing a national piece of research and a national conversation about how we can counter the short-termism of our democratic cycle to make sure that the needs of future generations are not sacrificed at the altar of present day political expediency. I will say to the Minister that in September of this year, the UN will for the first time convene a Summit of the Future with the intention of asking this core question regarding the principle of sustainable development: how do we meet the needs of our people today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs? This Bill is an opportunity for whoever is representing the Government to go to that summit with something concrete and meaningful to announce at the United Nations. It is an opportunity for Ireland to join the vanguard of nations that are making legislative change to take account of those generations that will come after us.

I thank the staff of the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel for their patience and support in drafting the Bill. I thank Coalition 2030 and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice for their support of its provisions.

I also thank both the previous and current Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Sophie Howe and Derek Walker, for their kind messages of support. Most importantly, I thank Síle Ginnane and Séafra Ó Faoláin of our research team, who I believe are in the Gallery. I suspect they are now among the foremost experts in Ireland on the potential of an ombudsman for future generations given their Herculean work in preparing the Bill. We in the Dáil are really the front-of-house people for the enormous amount of work that goes on in corridors elsewhere in Leinster House. We get to stand here and take credit for the work others do.

There is an old Greek proverb that states a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. I believe in this Bill and in this approach because I believe that future people matter even if I cannot meet, hear or know them and that young people count even if they will not count at the ballot box in the next election or the election after that. The choices we make in the here and now must balance the needs of today with the challenges of tomorrow. For that reason, I commend the Bill to the House.

See this speech in context