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

This Bill is about system change and managing system change. Much of our legislation is modelled on the UK climate bill which has been effective. It too has used this climate advisory council and it too has used this five-year, ten-year or 15-year idea of looking forward and setting budgets and parameters within which the state acts. One of the things we want to avoid is this Bill becoming the source of intense non-stop litigation as the solution to every problem, the addressing of every issue or the resolution of every individual action. It is not about individual actions but about system change. As I said, my understanding is that the UK legislation has not been subject to such use, although I will have to check the legal record on that. In our country we have had the likes of the Friends of the Irish Environment case last year. I was privileged to attend the court hearings which were remarkable events and a real testament to our justice system. What they were looking at was the broad import and response from the State. It was a question of whether we were applying the scale of system change that was wanted. That was an appropriate legal question, as opposed to us resolving every single issue of contention that may arise either on the investor side or the liability one.