Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)

I will be brief because I will have a final word again next week and I do not want to repeat myself too much. What motivated me and drove me towards this approach is that there are larger problems we will face as a society and as a species that cannot be solved in a five-year time horizon. Dr. O’Mahony said to me a number of years ago that we might all disagree and be at each other’s throats politically about what we should do today, tomorrow and next year, but if we take a 50-year vision and ask what we want things to look like in 50 years, most of us will agree or come to a place where we can have a conversation. From there, we can begin to work backwards.

That is the type of thinking I am trying to unlock through this office, whereby rather than just have the general political around-the-houses that we tend to get we look at a longer-term vision and we can open up a space where we can have a conversation about a longer-term vision. Then we can begin to work backwards and begin to figure out the steps we want to take in order to achieve that kind of 50-year outcome we desire. I will not say much more than that because I will be back at it again next week. I thank all the witnesses, and in particular Ms Jane Davidson, for appearing and speaking to us today. Hopefully it is something we can progress, perhaps not within the lifetime of this Dáil but it may carry over into the next Dáil, depending on how we go.