What Politicians Actually Need from Scientists
Scientific evidence alone does not enact public policy; rather, policy operates within a complex matrix of statutory processes, financial negotiation, and political risk management. In this episode of Air Quality Matters, I sit down with Denis Naughten , former Irish Minister for Communications, Energy, and Natural Resources and a 28-year parliamentary veteran with a foundational background in food microbiology research. Drawing from his dual perspective at the boundary between laboratory benchwork and Cabinet decision-making, Naughten deconstructs the institutional friction that prevents high-grade building physics, indoor air quality (IAQ), and epidemiological data from translating into legislative mandates. For technical professionals, engineers, and researchers operating in the indoor environmental quality sector, this analysis reframes evidence presentation from technical validation among scientific peers to actionable public policy design.
Why Does Robust Scientific Research Routinely Fail to Influence Building and Environmental Policy?
The primary point of failure lies in a structural mismatch between scientific communication norms and the operational requirements of the legislative machinery. Scientific training conditions researchers to present methodology, caveats, and comprehensive datasets for peer replication, whereas civil servants and parliamentarians require concise, binary recommendations. Public servants typically do not evaluate uncurated academic papers or academic abstracts lacking explicit policy mechanics; instead, they require vetted proposals that specify exactly which statutory instruments or budget lines must be amended. Furthermore, while academic bodies often frame ongoing uncertainty as a justification for extended research funding, decision-makers interpret ambiguous findings as insufficient justification to commit finite political capital, frequently reverting to default ideological positions when definitive, structured proposals are absent. Naughten details the precise administrative filtering process that technical dossiers undergo within government departments, outlining how interdepartmental scrutiny by the Ministry of Finance determines whether an evidentiary submission advances or stalls.
How Can Technical Specialists Structure Data to Secure Legislative and Fiscal Approval?
To bridge the gap between technical discovery and statutory adoption, specialists must organise their findings around three distinct policy pillars: absolute clarity of the specific legislative ask, explicit alignment with the prevailing political programme, and direct translation of technical metrics into tangible human outcomes. Rather than presenting aggregated pollutant concentrations or complex fluid dynamics in isolation, specialists must map those parameters directly to economic productivity, clinical health indicators, and exchequer expenditure. During the expansion of the solid fuel ban across Ireland, for instance, academic air quality datasets were reframed from ambient particulate counts into acute health impacts: six preventable deaths per day, systemic strain on national health infrastructure, and chronic respiratory illness among one in five children. By translating particulate mass into exchequer health savings and citizen welfare, the measure secured immediate interdepartmental consensus and broad public acceptance. Naughten breaks down a six-point analytical framework—spanning problem definition, barrier identification, statutory intervention design, and net societal dividend—that technical specialists can deploy to ensure their proposals withstand ministerial evaluation.
Expert Perspectives
A key critique raised during the discussion addresses the insular nature of scientific advocacy and its recurring failure to engage with the legislative calendar. Denis emphasised that researchers routinely overlook formal statutory consultation mechanisms—such as parliamentary committee pre-legislative scrutiny hearings and European Commission calls for evidence—where technical submissions can directly alter draft legislation prior to ministerial sign-off:
"Until academia realises that there is a responsibility on them to put that policy impact up there in lights, then they're going to fail. The responsibility is that they're in receipt of public funding. They have a responsibility to ensure that the research that has an impact in terms of public policy is brought directly to the people that need to know about it."
Furthermore, the discussion highlights the danger of setting arbitrary political targets divorced from supply-chain physics and workforce capacity. In both large-scale national deep retrofitting programs and renewable grid integrations, statutory mandates frequently stumble because technical parameters fail to account for practical execution constraints—such as qualified mechanical ventilation commissioning technicians or island logistics. When policy lacks pragmatic, phased execution pathways, public and parliamentary confidence erodes, demonstrating why building scientists must present incremental, risk-managed delivery frameworks rather than uncalibrated stretch targets.
Part 2: One Take Podcast
In this edition of One Take, we look at a detailed technical assessment of a landmark paper published in Building and Environment: "Integrating Health and Indoor Air Quality into European Building Policy, a Landmark Policy Shift." The analysis examines the 2024 recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), tracking how European building policy has evolved from an exclusive focus on thermal insulation and building airtightness toward a dual-mandate standard that formally binds energy decarbonization to indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
How Does the Recast EPBD Change Indoor Environmental Quality Compliance, and What Implementation Risks Lie Ahead?
The 2024 EPBD recast formally mandates that European decarbonization targets cannot be achieved at the expense of occupant health, explicitly requiring member states to integrate indoor environmental quality standards—covering ventilation adequacy, humidity, and thermal comfort—into national building codes by May 2026.
However, because the policy is enacted as a directive rather than a binding regulation, enforcement remains vulnerable to substantial national fragmentation, where individual member states risk adopting minimal compliance thresholds to reduce immediate developer costs. To prevent a widespread cycle of nominal "paper compliance"—where mechanical ventilation systems meet design specifications on documentation but remain poorly balanced, unmaintained, or deactivated during operation—the authors emphasise the need for a harmonised technical compliance framework. Their co-authors propose the adoption of the REHVA Indoor Environmental Quality Regulation model, which establishes continuous, low-cost sensor monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2 maintained below 500 to 800 ppm above ambient levels as a real-time proxy for ventilation adequacy and bioaerosol risk) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5 maintained strictly below 10μg/m3), alongside structured periodic audits for specialised pollutants including formaldehyde, radon, and nitrogen dioxide.
Integrating health and indoor air quality into European building policy: A landmark policy shift
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0:00 - Welcome back to Air Quality Matters.
0:02 - I'm Simon Jones and coming up a conversation with Dennis Norton.
0:07 - Dennis was for over 28 years a Member of Parliament and as a former Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in one of the most technically complex areas of government.
0:22 - He worked at the point where evidence, politics, public policy and implementation meet, as he saw firsthand how parliamentarians, senior officials and advisers weigh evidence alongside political priorities, public pressure, financial constraints and institutional realities.
0:45 - Dennis comes from science, in research in food microbiology, and a deep interest in solving real-world problems through evidence and practical thinking.
0:56 - Now he is a senior advisor in a public affairs and communications company,
1:00 - Red Flag and appointed to the High Level Advisory and Advocacy Group supporting Climate and Clean Air Coalition CCAC in UNEP's Technology and Economic Assessment Panel.
1:13 - It's this fascinating intersection between policy, academia and industry that we discuss.
1:20 - How science and knowledge is transformed into policy and action.
1:26 - From behind the desk of a politician, we discuss how science needs to communicate with politics.
1:33 - That balancing act from the other side of the desk and how the machinery of government really works when it comes to science.
1:41 - Overwhelming evidence and political decisions.
1:44 - This is a fascinating discussion for not just anyone involved in science to better understand how to communicate evidence,
1:51 - but for anyone, frankly, to better understand how knowledge is used and communicated in politics.
1:58 - This podcast is brought to you in partnership with Man Hummel, Particles Plus, Eiko, Eurovent, Lindab and S&P Ventilation.
2:07 - along with our charity partners, The Safer Air Project, and it simply would not be possible without them.
2:14 - Please do check them out in the show notes and at airqualitymatters.net.
2:19 - This is a conversation with Dennis Norton.
2:37 - There is a void between academia, policy and industry.
2:45 - And you're now kind of sitting in that intersection, which I think is really interesting.
2:50 - And you're quite unique in your history, having come from science, gone through both houses of the parliamentary system here and come out the other side now and are sitting in this middle ground.
3:01 - to communicate with it.
3:02 - And it's a permanent frustration.
3:04 - I know from the academic community that we have all the evidence, like this is obvious.
3:11 - I've got eight beautifully written papers that clearly define the problem and the solutions.
3:16 - Why isn't anybody listening?
3:18 - So that's, I think that's the value of a conversation like this.
3:22 - And I was, you know, just before we started rolling here, we were talking, um,
3:25 - And you were talking about the value of where a lot of the communication expertise comes from that teaches academia how to talk.
3:33 - And they are often the PR people, the editors and the media people.
3:39 - And you get the sense that it's not quite landing.
3:43 - Clearly, it's not landing because science really struggles to communicate with policy.
3:47 - So there's a uniqueness in policy, isn't there, in politics?
3:51 - how you absorb information, its impact, how you deal with it.
3:57 - That, I think, is an interesting conversation to try and tease out.
4:00 - Yeah, and I suppose maybe to try and put it in a nutshell, and we can flesh it out then, but to put it in a nutshell.
4:07 - So as a scientist, you are trained to communicate your evidence to peers.
4:15 - Yeah.
4:16 - your research work that you've done.
4:18 - And the objective is to ensure that your peers can repeat that study again.
4:26 - That's the whole objective behind your whole role in terms of communications, in terms of the way you're trained as a scientist.
4:34 - As a politician, on the other hand, whether that's a minister or a member of parliament, they have a very different job in relation to communication.
4:46 - First of all, they have to convince their peers that this is a good idea because if they don't have a majority in parliament...
4:54 - they're never going to get their proposal through.
4:57 - Secondly, they have to convince the finance ministry that this is a good proposal because ultimately most policy changes have some financial cost in relation to it.
5:09 - And thirdly, then you have to convince the public that this is a good story and a good job to deliver upon.
5:17 - So the
5:18 - The audiences are very different and you have the academics and the researchers going into the politicians or going into the policymakers, the officials, as if they're speaking to technical experts in a particular field.
5:35 - And the evidence goes way over their heads because once the researcher presents a proposal, straight away, if it's an official, a policymaker, and maybe to clarify, I would define a policymaker, there's three different types of policymakers.
5:53 - To me, there are those that draft policy.
5:56 - their officials in government departments and agencies, the commission at European Union level.
6:03 - Then you have the decision makers, their ministers and members of parliament who ultimately decide on a particular policy proposal.
6:12 - And then you have those that implement policy.
6:15 - And the needs of those three communities are very distinct and very different in terms of what evidence you'd
6:26 - Let's move away from the abstract in relation to it and give you a practical example of it.
6:32 - When I became Minister in 2016, one of the first reports that was presented to me was by the North-South Ministerial Council commissioned report on air quality on the island of Ireland.
6:45 - and it made a recommendation that we needed as an island, both the north and south, to extend the smoky coal ban across the country, but to extend the types of fuels as well.
7:01 - Not just fuel, coal, but other solid fuels like peat briquettes and so forth, and timber that wasn't kiln dried.
7:12 - So that was the proposal that came to me and I could see the obvious merit in relation to that and the officials had recommended that I proceed in relation to that.
7:23 - But when I brought that proposal to Cabinet...
7:26 - I presented it very differently.
7:28 - I presented it on the basis that 2,000 people every year were dying on the island of Ireland as a result of poor air quality or six people a day and that this was having a direct impact on the health services in Ireland not just in terms of the number of people that died but the impact on chronic illness across the country as well.
7:51 - And it got cabinet approval in relation to that.
7:55 - But when we made the public announcement on it, we worked closely with the Asthma Society on it.
8:01 - And we announced it in terms of the impact that this was having on children right across this country who are suffering from asthma.
8:10 - one in five children in Ireland have asthma.
8:13 - So this is a big issue.
8:15 - We related it back to ordinary citizens, their daily lives.
8:20 - So I took the empirical academic evidence that was there and depending on the audience that I was presenting to, I presented that evidence in a very different format, but one that people could relate to, people could understand
8:36 - And it could resonate with them and say, look, this is a good thing to do.
8:40 - And that's the work that I do with research organisations and private companies now where they have technical challenges.
8:47 - We try and we don't alter the evidence.
8:50 - The facts are the facts.
8:51 - But what we try and do is frame it in a manner that people can understand it, try and link it to a positive outcome, whether that's in terms of a financial return or an economic dividend or a health return in this case.
9:07 - So let's not specifically that case, but unpack that particular process, because I think it's interesting, right, that you'll have a series of academics, perhaps in different institutions that are doing research individually, collectively, and they build up a body of evidence that appears to say on the surface that this thing has this impact.
9:31 - And we think we need some evidence.
9:33 - government intervention of some description, some legislation, a regulation, something to assist this or funding or something to drive it.
9:44 - And so that that information is collected.
9:47 - Perhaps.
9:53 - civil servants in the department are attending conferences or reading papers or naturally becoming aware of building evidence in a particular area.
10:04 - Or perhaps you're presenting that you're coming together as a group.
10:08 - You might be a specialist group from a specialist area like air quality and going, look, this is a problem.
10:13 - We think air quality needs to be looked at in this case, smoky coal and smoky fuels.
10:18 - Yeah.
10:18 - And you present that evidence very rarely to a minister or you're presenting it to the people that work in that department.
10:29 - And in that case, this is an in-government department.
10:33 - Yeah.
10:33 - Because we must address the kind of the opposition end of this as well, I think, which is interesting.
10:37 - Yeah.
10:39 - So you're presenting as a bunch of academics, often a load of papers, perhaps a nice report, you know, that you've condensed down to a nice, easy to read 68 pages.
10:50 - Yeah.
10:51 - Right.
10:51 - And some some poor soul has got to go through that and collect it.
10:55 - Yeah.
10:56 - So somebody as a minister, you're sat there on a daily basis, your staff coming to you with ideas and going, look, there's this thing.
11:06 - I think you need to read it.
11:08 - And are they interpreting that massive information and presenting it to you in a brief way?
11:14 - And what control do the people that are pulling this information together have in what you're ultimately presented as a minister?
11:24 - Because I want to come on to the next bit in a minute, which is you then deciding how best to communicate what you interpret from that to your different group stakeholders.
11:34 - But in the first instance, what are you seeing and how much time are you getting?
11:38 - Because there's one on air quality, but there's about 32 others, I imagine, in your desk at any one time, right?
11:45 - Yeah, you're right.
11:46 - And so I was in charge of the most technical department in government, Department of Communications, Energy, Natural Resources, Environment and Waste as well.
11:59 - So there was multiple reports across each of those divisions on my desk at any one time.
12:07 - A lot of them very technically heavy.
12:10 - And just to say that...
12:14 - In the vast majority of cases, it was a proposal that's presented to me as minister, not options.
12:22 - It's usually very rare that a minister is given a series of options to look at.
12:27 - absolutely the document that will be presented to me will set out a number of options, but it will make a recommendation.
12:35 - And ultimately what the public servant is looking for is a decision, yes or no, from the minister, a signature from the minister to proceed or not to proceed with a proposal.
12:48 - And they present the case as they see it in relation to that.
12:52 - So that's what a minister gets.
12:54 - They don't get...
12:56 - all of the academic research.
12:57 - They don't get the what-ifs and maybes.
13:00 - They get a synopsised version of the research, where the directions are going, what the options are, but ultimately there is a recommendation made.
13:10 - If there's not a recommendation made, then it doesn't land on the Minister's desk.
13:14 - Because you don't know what to do with it next.
13:15 - I mean, you know, you're not reading stuff for the fun of it.
13:18 - So, like, the point is a proposal has got to have a clear, actionable what next.
13:23 - Yes, there's a clear ask in relation to everything that is presented to a minister.
13:29 - So if we maybe unpack some of what you've just said, because it's very interesting.
13:34 - First of all, I was lucky in the department I was in, because it was a technical department,
13:39 - we had technical experts there that would be reading academic papers.
13:45 - However, in general, across the public service, that doesn't happen.
13:50 - And in general, you need to remember now, because of the way the public service has changed and the civil service has changed in more recent years, you see civil servants starting in one government department
14:03 - and moving across those departments as their career progresses.
14:07 - And in fact, I've been in the fortunate position to be on interview boards where public servants are looking for senior posts.
14:15 - And one of the things that we look at is what's their experience across government.
14:21 - And if they've only come up through one department or agency, that is seen as less advantageous than someone that has been in a number of government departments and agencies.
14:32 - So that leads to officials that have a good understanding of the broad public service and civil service and how it works, but don't have the in-depth experience and knowledge in relation to any specific area.
14:49 - So it means that those that are engaging with civil servants...
14:53 - do need to explain it in a manner that the civil service can easily understand, that breaks it down to understandable language.
15:02 - And I've seen it, because I've been at tables where I've had technical experts from outside, researchers and industry experts come in and present to me along with my officials and my officials nodding in agreement in relation to it, but not understanding what's been said.
15:21 - Now, if I hadn't challenged those individuals to actually explain to me exactly what they were trying to say, they would have left that meeting believing that everyone knew what we were talking about and why isn't there action.
15:34 - And they would have expressed frustration in relation to that.
15:37 - But the reality is that they had lost their audience very early on in that presentation because they had got into a lot of technical jargon without providing the understanding and framework for it.
15:49 - So the point I want to make here is one of the biggest challenges.
15:55 - weaknesses that the academic community have in engaging with the public policy system is that they believe that public servants, politicians and ministers actually read academic papers.
16:10 - Academics don't read academic papers.
16:13 - Why would they expect us to do it?
16:15 - Academics read the abstract of an academic paper and they decide very quickly whether they want to delve further into it.
16:24 - Now, I have yet to come across
16:27 - to any great extent, academic abstracts that mention anything about policy, maybe a passing reference to it.
16:36 - But there is no detailed policy explanation in an abstract.
16:41 - And yet we're expecting civil servants and politicians who are really time constrained,
16:47 - to shovel their way through academic papers and try and dig out somewhere buried in it the policy nugget that is in that.
16:55 - They don't do it.
16:56 - They're not going to do it.
16:58 - And until academia realises that there is a responsibility on them,
17:04 - to put that policy impact up there in lights, then they're going to fail.
17:10 - And the responsibility is that they're in receipt of public funding.
17:15 - They have a responsibility to ensure that the research that has an impact in terms of public policy is brought directly to the people that need to know about it.
17:25 - Do you think there's enough visibility in
17:29 - in the decisions that are made on scientific material that can demonstrate what good looks like to people.
17:42 - Because...
17:44 - It seems to me in a lot of cases, and it's not just the same for the science community, the same for advocates, communities, they're advocating for asthma or something like that.
17:52 - It's the same for industry, that bodies that are trying to get movement that to look at the success stories, what has gone through Parliament and had an impact on.
18:04 - And what did the communication look like that got that through?
18:08 - I don't see enough of that being done or enough of that being visible.
18:12 - And even as a politician or even as the machinery behind them, the SEAIs, the EPAs, the people that are feeding into your department, to get a good picture of, OK, this is what a good...
18:29 - statement looks like.
18:30 - This is how you present this scientifically obscure, nuanced, difficult subject matter in a way that five people removed from you can portray that information in a way that's going to resonate.
18:45 - Yeah, and I suppose, first of all, I think the best way to do that is to look at what the advocates do in terms of non-governmental organizations and what industry do, because they will paint a picture.
19:00 - And, you know, if it's the Asmus Society, for example, or COPD Ireland or whatever the case may be.
19:09 - They will tell you a story about a patient and the impact this change will have on them.
19:16 - If it's an industry, they'll tell you the impact that this will have on a specific employer and a specific business.
19:23 - That doesn't happen when you're talking about science.
19:26 - And this is, I think, one of the weaknesses I say to the research community.
19:32 - They need to, in terms of how they frame their message, they need to address the three C's.
19:37 - They need to have absolute clarity in relation to what they're talking about, what exactly their ask is, and that that is presented in understandable language where they should be able to easily explain their concept without the need for PowerPoint.
19:52 - The second thing is they need to frame it in the context of what the political agenda is.
19:58 - And that's very clear because you can look at the programme for government or the legislative programme of government or see what's happening in Parliament because all of that is easily searchable to see what's on the political agenda and how your particular research functions.
20:14 - fits into that political agenda.
20:16 - And the third thing, the most important thing is, people tend to forget that this is about people.
20:22 - It's about the citizen.
20:24 - What we're talking about here is public policy.
20:27 - And yet, when the engagement takes place with government departments and agencies and officials,
20:34 - The scientific and research community forget that word public.
20:37 - They forget about this is down to the impact it has on people.
20:42 - So yesterday I was talking with a group of 63 researchers, undergraduate researchers from around Europe, who were presenting in the European Parliament in November.
20:55 - And I said to them, there are six questions that they need to be able to answer in terms of their research.
21:00 - The first one is, what's the problem that they're trying to solve?
21:05 - Why is it a problem?
21:08 - And how are they proposing to solve it?
21:11 - Then they need to look at what is the policy ask in relation to it?
21:16 - What's the difference if they actually deliver on that policy ask?
21:21 - Or what's the barrier to implementing that particular policy?
21:26 - So if they can answer those six questions and frame it in the context of those three C's, then you will have something that is really powerful and that will actually resonate with both policy makers and decision makers.
21:42 - And there's an element of storytelling here, isn't there?
21:44 - Absolutely, yeah.
21:45 - Good communication nearly always falls into the traditional story arcs in some form or other.
21:51 - And how many times do you hear a policymaker or politician talking about a constituent story, right?
22:00 - Because that's what resonates.
22:02 - That's what lands this back at the citizen.
22:05 - So it not only lands it back at the citizen, which is important,
22:10 - But it also makes it easy for everyone else to understand.
22:15 - So it mightn't affect me.
22:18 - But if someone tells a story about a constituent or a person with COPD or a child with asthma, you can relate to it.
22:27 - So it's not just...
22:29 - about uh communicating with that particular individual it's about communicating with the population as a whole because people can then envisage it they can understand what you're talking about they may agree or disagree with it but at least they understand what you're talking about and that's where it's critical yeah and i like what you said about the clarity part of it as well the the absolute clarity
22:54 - I think that's often easier to do in some quarters than other.
22:59 - You know, if there's a financial impact or there's an impact on a particular cohort.
23:04 - But sometimes, and science loves nuance and complexity and ever going, I mean, often the whole of science is based on getting more research, right?
23:13 - So they find it very difficult to get out of this kind of eternal loop of we haven't quite figured it out yet.
23:18 - We need to invest more in research, right?
23:20 - Yeah.
23:22 - So they've got to kind of reverse direction or take themselves out of that loop a little bit and try and find ways of going, here is clearly what we're saying.
23:33 - But we've seen, and you've been right in the middle of this, I'm sure, particularly in energy and sustainability, that that surety can be a stick that's used to beat you with at the same time.
23:45 - That you're trying to have clarity on something that is complex and has nuance.
23:51 - And particularly things that involve risk, where there's very rarely zero risk in anything.
23:58 - You present these clear cases and politicians have to stand up and present these clear cases.
24:03 - But it's anything but.
24:05 - Right.
24:05 - Absolutely.
24:06 - Yeah.
24:07 - That's a that's a funny line to tread.
24:09 - It is.
24:10 - And remember that we have to be have a clear case and a clear proposal because we're trying to convince our colleagues.
24:19 - We're trying to convince convince the Minister for Finance and we're trying to convince the public.
24:25 - If we're coming out and say, well, this might be right or that might be right, who are you going to convince in relation to that?
24:31 - Now, that doesn't stop the academic community putting forward evidence that is not definitive in one way or the other.
24:42 - One of the hardest decisions that any minister or politician can make is the decision that you're making with a blank page in front of you.
24:51 - When you're starting with no evidence and no base whatsoever.
24:55 - So in such circumstances, getting...
25:00 - research, even if there's a caveat with that, is much better than working off a blank page.
25:07 - And the reality is, and this is the reality whether people like it or not, that if I or any other politician is working off a blank page in terms of trying to provide a solution and we don't have evidence, no matter how many caveats and question marks it comes with,
25:26 - we go back to ideology.
25:28 - And that's how we come forward.
25:30 - So those in the research community, even though the evidence is not absolute, and it can never be fully absolute anyway, but even partial evidence provides us with a framework on which to start.
25:44 - And remember, in politics, no more than civil servants and politicians, they have lots of things to think about.
25:53 - It's not evidence-based.
25:55 - based decisions that they make.
25:57 - It's evidence informed because there are other aspects.
26:00 - There are economic aspects, there are social aspects, there are cultural aspects that have to be taken into account as well in terms of how you design a particular policy and proposal.
26:11 - And we have to weigh all of those up.
26:14 - But at least if we have evidence, even if it's not
26:19 - absolute it will help in developing that process and maybe focus on where the direction needs to go where more investment needs to take place even potentially in research but one thing i would really warn researchers about doing is that and i've seen it i think every time i've as a politician
26:41 - have had the research community present to me, and we'd say it among our colleagues before they come in, we'll time it and see how long does it take for them to put out the begging bowl.
26:51 - Because ultimately that's what they're in for.
26:53 - We want more money.
26:54 - It's not actually about coming in and telling us this is the policy proposal that we believe will make an impact based on the research that we've done to date.
27:04 - It's no, look, we've done this, but we want more money before we can tell you anything.
27:09 - And that's no good.
27:10 - And that can be a legitimate ask in some circumstances, I guess.
27:14 - But I think what I'm getting from you is that in these steps that are quite far removed from you presenting this to your stakeholders, you've got to be very clear what the ask is.
27:26 - Yeah.
27:27 - You've got the absolute clarity on what are you actually saying here?
27:32 - What is the evidence saying?
27:33 - What does this mean next?
27:35 - Because if the civil servants, the people within the authorities, the EPAs of this world can't clearly articulate what that ask is, they can't pull a proposal together that clearly lays out what the steps are.
27:53 - And I'm guessing there's also an art to that ask in where you pitch that ask as well and understanding what the second and third outcomes might be.
28:06 - I'm not talking about shooting for the stars necessarily with every proposal or every bank of evidence you pull together, but...
28:13 - You probably have to at least understand the realities of the environment you're putting this into to say, OK, this is what we think we we need.
28:22 - What would we take?
28:23 - What would we what would be a reasonable outcome if we couldn't get that?
28:27 - And sometimes the more useful information and feedback you get is in terms of where someone says no.
28:37 - And you delve into, well, why are you saying no in relation to this?
28:41 - Because based on it, and it could be that it's too expensive or it's not practical to implement or politically it's not going to be acceptable.
28:51 - But knowing and understanding what the barrier is to it, then you can go back and think about it.
28:57 - Well, how can I reconfigure this proposal to get over this problem?
29:02 - potential barrier.
29:03 - So for example me as a minister in charge of very technical department trying to get funding for new initiatives was really really difficult.
29:13 - So what I used to do was I put proposals forward to the department of finance to run a pilot.
29:19 - It was limited in terms of the cost.
29:23 - And then if it was successful, we could ramp it up.
29:26 - If it wasn't, you know, there wasn't a huge amount of public funding lost in relation to it.
29:30 - But if I went to the Department of Finance, for example, one of the initiatives we developed was in terms of putting solar panels, a grant for solar panels on the roofs of homes.
29:42 - And we tied that in with battery storage in the home.
29:45 - There was no grant in the country when I became minister for putting solar panels on domestic homes around the country.
29:52 - And we went with a pilot proposal in relation to it.
29:56 - It was successful and has been ramped up since.
29:58 - And as a result of that, now right across the country, we see, you know, every second or every third home with a solar panel on it.
30:06 - But that was because we went with an initial small ask to the Department of Finance and ramped that up over time.
30:13 - I'll have you back to the podcast in just a moment.
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32:09 - Now, back to the show.
32:11 - Is there potentially an art to communicating with organisations that feed into departments and the departments?
32:20 - structures themselves the civil servants and even the the politicians if you can get in front of them to try and understand the landscape from their perspective so that you can better frame what you're saying because you know trying to second it's the same for the policy make for the for the scientists and the researchers a blank piece of paper not understanding your audience is a big problem um you mentioned program for government being really important and
32:50 - How important is something like a programme for government to determine your day-to-day work as a minister, ultimately?
32:57 - Because if you're proposing something that's wildly outside the programme for government, is it just not going to get any bandwidth at all, ultimately?
33:04 - It's not that it's not going to get any bandwidth at all, but you need to be able to make a very strong case in relation to it.
33:11 - So if you are coming from a research background...
33:16 - and you're trying to get a policy change that isn't in the programme for government or contradicts what's in the programme for government, it is a really, really difficult ask unless you have really robust evidence to back that up.
33:30 - However, in a lot of cases, and in the vast majority of cases, your research and your policy proposal actually helps to facilitate and implement an objective that's in the programme for government.
33:43 - Then you're pushing an open door once you can show...
33:47 - how this links up to that and how it can actually impact on it.
33:51 - And yes, you can by working with non-governmental organisations, maybe working with parliamentary committees and presenting evidence there, find how best to frame and nuance your research.
34:09 - So it does resonate with the officials and ultimately with the minister.
34:14 - And I think, you know, one of the great resources that we have both domestically in Ireland and at EU level is we have a parliamentary process where any new piece of legislation gets debated before the law is drafted.
34:29 - at committee which is called pre-legislative scrutiny and they usually seek public submissions.
34:34 - So researchers can submit to that, they don't, but they can submit to that and it's a very powerful way of actually ensuring that their research is reflected in the ultimate law.
34:46 - And the same thing happens at European Union level where every single proposal that comes forward from the Commission, long before they draft that proposal, the very first stage is a call for evidence
34:58 - And anyone within the research community, anywhere throughout Europe, can make a submission and present their research and its impact on policy.
35:08 - Again, very few actually do that.
35:11 - So the tools and vehicles are there for it.
35:14 - They're not being utilised at the moment because there is that disassociation from the research community and the policy community.
35:23 - And...
35:24 - Absolutely, both need to come together and there is a responsibility on both sides.
35:29 - But the first step needs to be taken by the research community because they need to show what they have, what they have to offer.
35:37 - And then I think you will see the policy community reaching across and starting that engagement.
35:44 - And as you know, I'm involved in, for example, the TCP on energy and buildings and communities.
35:49 - And that's a great example of an organization whose job it is, is to convert academic research and knowledge into policy orientated knowledge.
36:01 - You know, and there is a subtle and not so subtle difference in some circumstances in what you are actually gathering and how you're presenting it, you know, beyond
36:12 - a paper that is reviewed by your peers, you are having to present this information in a way that has impact, in a way that's relevant to the stakeholders.
36:21 - And things like the TCP has members sitting on it from the different countries, usually from political organisations.
36:31 - I mean, civil servant based organisations that help guide that process and make it more fit for purpose for their governments and their countries.
36:40 - So there are mechanisms out there.
36:44 - I'm involved in another one, which is the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
36:48 - And the same thing, they produced a report recently, and it was an assessment of putting investment into 25 specific measures to deal with investment.
36:59 - short-lived but high-impact emissions like black carbon, particulate matter, methane, which are having, as we know, a disproportionate impact in terms of climate change, but are also having a huge impact in terms of air quality.
37:17 - And what they have unusually done on this occasion is linked up
37:22 - the climate measures and the impact that they would have with both the health and economic implications in terms of workforce productivity and brought all of these together in one single assessment, which shows that for the investment that's put in by the Department of Finance in reducing these particular emissions, the return ranges from some countries to about $4 for every $1 or every 1 euro that's put in,
37:51 - to in parts of the developing world to $15 for every $1 of investment that's put in.
37:57 - So there's a huge potential there to actually not just look at climate as a cost, not just look at air quality as a cost, but look at the economic dividend, the health dividend, the productivity dividend that is there, as well as the quality of life dividend, which for us as politicians is really important in terms of the case
38:19 - that we make to our electorate, just like the example I gave earlier in relation to air quality in Ireland, where we link that back directly to children with asthma.
38:30 - Yeah.
38:31 - So you get these kind of you get these proposals hitting your desk on a Monday morning.
38:35 - You come in, not a surprise, I imagine some of them will be part of programmes of government.
38:40 - Some of them you'd have commissioned through meetings yourself.
38:42 - Others will come in out of left field because somebody had a great idea or from another department even.
38:48 - So you're reading through these proposals and then you have to kind of sit there.
38:52 - as a head of department and think, if I agree with this, if I think this is a solid next step, you've then got to go and pitch that ultimately to your peers, to the Taoiseach or the prime minister or whatever your version of it is in your country, to the cabinet, to various groups, interdepartmental groups, perhaps.
39:13 - Um,
39:15 - So there that it's then down to you, ultimately, I guess, is it that that's your experience and knowledge going?
39:21 - Yeah, what's going to land with public health here?
39:24 - What's going to land with the finance department here?
39:27 - How do I present this in a way that?
39:29 - that the environment minister is going to get it.
39:32 - That's the craft of politics.
39:35 - Exactly.
39:35 - So when I, as a minister, had a proposal in front of me, like the one in terms of the ban on smoky coal.
39:45 - So the three things that I was thinking about in relation to that, one is how do I convince my cabinet colleagues that this is a good initiative to back?
39:58 - And it is seen or perceived as a poor reflection on a minister to bring forward a proposal and not have it accepted.
40:09 - So you only bring forward proposals when you know that you're going to get approval at Cabinet.
40:17 - And how do you know that before?
40:18 - And is that conversations, conversations and you every single proposal that goes before cabinet has to be circulated to every other government department and they provide feedback in relation to it.
40:46 - before the proposal goes out in the first place.
40:48 - Yeah.
40:49 - The second thing is then if you succeed in getting it through Cabinet, you need to get it through Parliament, through the Dáil then.
40:57 - And the last thing you want to do is to get your colleagues in Cabinet to support something and you fail to get it through the Dáil.
41:05 - And when I was in government, we were in a minority situation in the Dáil.
41:09 - So that was a risky business as well.
41:11 - So...
41:12 - You didn't want to end up with egg on your face, but egg on your colleagues' faces as well, because they're going to be very wary about approving something else if you fail to get it through the door.
41:23 - And then thirdly, how is this going to resonate with the public?
41:27 - Because the last thing you want to do in terms of getting something through Cabinet
41:32 - getting something through the Dáil and then having a public outcry against it is going to make it very hard for you to convince colleagues in the Dáil or in Cabinet again if you've had to back down on something.
41:43 - So when you look at any proposal that's put in front of you by your officials,
41:49 - Those three questions are going through your mind.
41:53 - Can I get this through cabinet?
41:55 - Can I get this through parliament?
41:57 - Can I convince the public that there is merit in this proposal?
42:02 - And those three questions, everything that comes onto your desk, those three questions have to be answered by a minister.
42:11 - that the officials will have already answered or substantially answered those questions.
42:18 - And you're hoping that the people that present them with the evidence and the research in the first place will have substantially answered those questions for you.
42:26 - Because ultimately, they're the experts.
42:28 - They understand the implications of this.
42:31 - But they do, but they just don't normally articulate it because they think it's a given.
42:36 - But it's not their political capital on the line.
42:38 - No.
42:39 - This is the challenge in politics.
42:42 - Politics is a rough business in that sense.
42:45 - I think you articulated that very well.
42:47 - You only have a certain amount of capital.
42:49 - Yeah.
42:50 - And you use that up on the wrong proposals and you're not heard.
42:54 - Yeah.
42:55 - You know, worse, you use capital up on a proposal and...
42:59 - And you can't move it through the door or worse, it's not accepted by the public.
43:05 - And I think everybody has seen elements of that at every stage that gets involved, things that make good sense.
43:12 - And you get a nod in minister, but it just never gets to cabinet.
43:15 - You see stuff that gets to cabinet, but gets shot down in the door because.
43:18 - Somebody missed something or it just doesn't have the legs on it.
43:21 - It's not politically the right time for it.
43:24 - Timing is everything often.
43:26 - Yes, things or it goes through and there's, you know, we could name any number of political moves over the years from water meters to where they like where there's there's a civil movement.
43:39 - upset over it they just they just do not accept that move um so it's a risky business ultimately these things are not without consequence and that i think that's something you have to remember yes that you it might seem like there's scientific evidence for this stuff that it makes absolute sense to you in front of you in your world view um
44:01 - But it's going into a machine that is highly consequential to the people that are putting this idea through.
44:07 - And that's the challenge, isn't it?
44:09 - Yeah.
44:09 - And that is the challenge.
44:11 - Ultimately, the minister or the politician that is pushing a particular proposal.
44:18 - they're putting their name to it, their reputation to it and their career to that.
44:24 - And it has, for things like this, have brought down political careers because a politician backed the wrong horse in relation to an issue.
44:35 - And...
44:36 - What makes it much easier for ultimately the politician, either the parliamentarian or the minister to take and run with, is if the consequences and the implications are teased out before it's presented to them.
44:51 - And that's where the real sweet spot is.
44:53 - And so how do we get the research community to get into this frame of mind?
44:59 - And what we need to do is there's a UN concept called human security.
45:07 - And the concept is that you look at a problem from the impact on the individual, the individual within their community and then wider society.
45:18 - So you start from an individual and you work out from there.
45:21 - And if you can take research, because as I say, it's public policy, so it has an impact on some citizen.
45:29 - If you can start from that and frame...
45:32 - the language around that, then it's much easier for one, people to understand, but two, for them to communicate it and see the other implications of it to their colleagues, to their peers, to Parliament and to society in general.
45:48 - Yeah, that's really interesting.
45:50 - What about those elements of knowledge that don't necessarily require a major policy change that perhaps can even fit within existing policy and statecraft, but doesn't have the current political will to push it?
46:08 - Because often that's the ask as well.
46:10 - You say, you know, a good one is air quality.
46:20 - existing funds to support, I don't know, retrofit, right?
46:24 - And why isn't ventilation part of it kind of an approach?
46:28 - So you say, well, okay, we're not actually asked.
46:30 - There's not a big ask politically from a legislative perspective.
46:35 - Yeah.
46:36 - But we do have got a bowl out for funding for a particular thing that we think is being missed or a shift in management approach or direction to a department to rethink how it manages a certain thing.
46:50 - There's a lot of that that goes on as well.
46:52 - There is a lot of that and it's a bit more difficult.
46:54 - So first of all, a lot of the time you're right, a lot of the changes that are made.
47:00 - are made by what's called a statutory instrument.
47:02 - So it's not primary legislation.
47:04 - It doesn't go and be debated on the floor of the Dáil.
47:08 - The chances are it may not even require cabinet approval because the minister has the authority to introduce this.
47:15 - Maybe a change in a particular standard.
47:18 - But...
47:19 - It has implications.
47:21 - Every change you make has an implication.
47:24 - It might have an implication for a small number of companies in a very niche industry, but it has implications.
47:32 - So you need to still think about what the implications of that are because it is public policy.
47:37 - So it has to impact on the public somewhere.
47:40 - In some form, it does impact because it is in relation to some public standard.
47:47 - So you need to think about that, no matter how small a group that is, and see, well, how can we overcome whatever challenges or issues that are there?
47:58 - So, you know, it may be the case, it could be emission standards in a particular area.
48:03 - industry that might make it easier for them to get planning permission for an expansion in the future or that there are less of the staff being absent from work but it has some implication and you need to try and think what is that implication what's the positive outcome in relation to this and how can we articulate that
48:24 - Yeah, and present that in a way that the minister or the people working for them understand both the intended and unintended consequences of those decisions.
48:36 - There's not an infinite pot of money, which means if you ever are asking for more, it means somebody is going to get less somewhere.
48:41 - Yeah.
48:42 - Right.
48:42 - Whether it's accumulatively or specifically.
48:44 - Yeah.
48:45 - That's a reality.
48:46 - Yeah.
48:46 - Yeah, and sometimes you're right in that there mightn't necessarily be a direct financial impact.
48:55 - Ventilation is probably a good example in relation to it.
48:59 - There's positive outcomes in relation to it.
49:02 - But in terms of me as minister, and I was the minister that introduced the retrofit grants initially, the deep retrofit grants,
49:12 - That issue of ventilation wasn't brought to my attention as minister at that stage by either the civil servants or the research community.
49:24 - Had it been brought to my attention, yes, it would have been an issue that I would have taken into account.
49:29 - One other issue that was presented to me a couple of years ago was from the island communities.
49:36 - Because the grant that I approved was the same in Rascommon as it was in Ilan Arranmore.
49:44 - So on the Arran Islands, on the islands off Donegal and Kerry and so forth, the grant was the exact same.
49:51 - Now, building anything or doing any sort of construction work on an island is much more expensive.
49:58 - That wasn't brought to my attention at the time.
50:01 - Had it been brought to my attention, they would have got a higher grant at that stage.
50:05 - And it wasn't something that, unfortunately, I thought about at the time that it was approving this particular grant, because the initial focus was on midland communities where we were actually trying to discourage people.
50:20 - from burning peat.
50:22 - So that had been our focus was to take out turf fires and turf ranges.
50:26 - And we hadn't considered that at the time.
50:28 - Had it been brought to my attention by someone on the islands or by the research community, that change would have happened.
50:34 - And the same with ventilation.
50:36 - And that's the skill and the art of the lobby groups, the industry experts, the research communities, in articulating those things well enough so those are brought to... And these were issues that went out for public consultation.
50:52 - So the department had asked the public for their view on it.
50:57 - These were two issues that hadn't been reflected back in that.
51:01 - And, you know, you could...
51:03 - Blame whoever you want in relation to it.
51:06 - I, for one, regretted that that wasn't brought to my attention because I could easily have made that change and would have willingly made that change.
51:15 - But as I say, it wasn't part of the recommendation that came to me.
51:19 - And who knows how these things get lost in the jigs and reels?
51:22 - You know, you often find the public perception of things like public consultations is that it's a window dressing after the fact.
51:29 - Do you get a feeling that you're not?
51:30 - I don't disagree with that.
51:32 - But now with artificial intelligence, it's much easier.
51:36 - And the EU Commission use it a lot of the time now in terms of fully analysing a lot of reports.
51:42 - But also we have, we live in a democracy.
51:45 - And I would always argue to the research community that you make two submissions.
51:50 - you make one to the government and the civil service.
51:54 - But in tandem with that, you also make a submission to Parliament, to the parliamentary committee that's dealing with it, and to the parliamentary research services within the Oireachtas, so that the politicians have it as well as the civil servants.
52:08 - And very quickly then, if I as a minister ignore the island communities, and that's a piece of research that was given to my officials,
52:17 - the politicians will be very quick inside in Leinster House to tell me I missed that.
52:23 - And very quickly you can correct that.
52:24 - So it's a way to actually bypass some of the filtration that goes on in terms of the evidence that ultimately makes it up to the minister.
52:31 - And that's a really good example of understanding the layer cake of a political system that most countries will have.
52:39 - different houses will have regional and national government, federal government, regional government, you name it, all the different versions of it.
52:47 - And this isn't just a one-hit wonder.
52:49 - When you're trying to build a case, particularly the bigger the case is, you have to understand that you need to...
52:56 - I always say to people when we're trying to build cases for things, you've got to imagine...
53:01 - you not being at the table when the decision's being made.
53:04 - Who is going to be around those tables having those conversations?
53:09 - And can you get your ideas in front of those stakeholders?
53:13 - Absolutely.
53:14 - And in terms of public policy, you're not going to be around.
53:18 - As a researcher, you are never going to be around the table that makes the decision.
53:24 - Ultimately, the decision will be made at a cabinet table.
53:29 - And unless you have a seal of office from the president, you're not going to be at that table.
53:34 - And there is a chain of Chinese whispers the whole way along.
53:37 - And that's why I said that you have to address the three C's, one of which is clarity.
53:43 - Because if you have a simple message, a simple message will travel and will resonate.
53:54 - different story yeah I remember speaking to a communication expert once and they had these kind of four hours or five hours can't remember what it was but it was it was it was reach like who are you getting in front of reaction is it landing resonance do you actually hear that being repeated back to you in a way that you know they've got it
54:15 - And that is so important.
54:17 - If you are not articulating it in a way that is so clear that you hear people using those same talking points outside of your control, it doesn't have that resonance.
54:29 - It's so important.
54:30 - And then ultimately the result, the communication is no use unless you actually have an outcome out the other side of it.
54:37 - But that resonant piece is so important.
54:41 - Put me in the head of a minister on the big stuff.
54:47 - And I mean the really big stuff.
54:49 - I was talking to an advocate for air quality in Australia this morning on the podcast and
54:54 - They're waiting on a report to come out.
54:57 - It's the first one that's been done, I think, since 1998 in Australia on the impact of air quality on society in Australia.
55:05 - And they're expecting an amazing report that is going to say it's in the billions a year to Australia.
55:11 - The cost to lost productivity, absenteeism, health, you know, you name it.
55:17 - Which means...
55:19 - There's a lot of weight put on those kind of evidence.
55:23 - We see it in climate change.
55:25 - We see it in environmental health.
55:26 - Air quality is another one.
55:29 - We see it in these factors where there's unbelievable evidence and impact of the harm, the costs, the disruption, climate change is an example,
55:43 - So you just assume that the evidence is just so utterly overwhelming and this is just so important across all departments.
55:51 - Why are we not seeing the traction that we expect to see?
55:56 - And you're no different.
55:57 - You're sitting there in a department and you're going, Jesus, this, you know, this is costing us in Ireland.
56:02 - Was it five billion a year air quality?
56:04 - It's costing us this five people a day are dying from it.
56:07 - All these big impacts.
56:09 - heaven and earth should be moved.
56:12 - It is the public perception to fix this, yet you don't see those gears, but it's still falling within that same political mechanism.
56:20 - Yeah, and the simple answer is very easy in relation to that.
56:26 - And I go back to the North-South Ministerial Council commissioned report on air quality.
56:31 - There was a clear recommendation
56:33 - And the recommendation was to extend the smoky coal ban throughout the country and to extend it to other solid fuels.
56:42 - Very simple ask.
56:44 - I could easily go.
56:45 - I had the evidence.
56:46 - I had the impact and I had the ask to go to Cabinet with.
56:51 - A lot of the time, and I know from talking to colleagues that have sat on the Climate Committee in the Oireachtas,
56:59 - And they've said it to me, it's like a revolving door of scientists coming in, telling us what's wrong, telling us what needs to be done, but no one coming forward with practical solutions.
57:10 - You know, like it's like coming in before the Climate Committee and saying, well, look, transport emissions are too high.
57:16 - We need to get every single fossil fuel car off the road by 2030.
57:22 - That's not practical.
57:23 - You know, so what is practical?
57:26 - What is pragmatic?
57:28 - Lay out a clear roadmap that can actually be implemented by the politicians.
57:34 - And a lot of the time, that's the piece that's missing.
57:37 - And one of the frustrating things really about climate is that climate has, until very recently, ignored the issue of air quality.
57:49 - And we all remember the debacle in relation to diesel.
57:52 - We were told in order to address climate change, we should have more diesel cars on the road until we realised that it was having a detrimental impact in terms of air quality.
58:05 - And it's only very recently now that we've had the climate scientists
58:11 - eventually acknowledge that there's an issue in relation to air quality because the actions we take in terms of climate, we take actions today, it's going to take 10, 20, 30 years to see the implications of that.
58:27 - We take actions on climate today.
58:29 - Within a couple of years, you're going to see the impact in terms of air quality.
58:34 - Very quickly, there's a dividend in return in terms of health, in terms of workforce productivity, in terms of the levels of disability.
58:44 - But yet, that was not part of the narrative.
58:47 - And the point I'm making here is the climate scientists...
58:51 - shoved the evidence at the politicians, but failed to make the connection to people and that public policy aspect and to show how does this benefit individual citizens.
59:06 - And that was the piece that they missed.
59:08 - And a really good example, I think, of that is the London low emissions.
59:12 - Yes.
59:12 - Like a really good example of a very solid body of evidence.
59:16 - I know a lot of the scientists that were involved building that from UCL and Imperial and others.
59:21 - They presented a very clear case with a very clear action.
59:24 - They had the data to show how this was manifesting.
59:28 - And 10 or 15 years on.
59:31 - we are now seeing the epidemiological impact of those decisions.
59:36 - So this can be done at a big scale.
59:38 - But it's interesting to me, you get these scenarios where you get stuff where there's clear evidence of failure of a state.
59:48 - A good example of that would be...
59:50 - Air quality and ventilation in schools, right?
59:53 - We know the impact of air quality in schools has a huge impact on infection risk, absenteeism, their workplaces for teachers.
1:00:02 - We've seen it in the pandemic, the impact of poor ventilation in schools.
1:00:06 - They become vectors for infection risk.
1:00:08 - So we know this stuff is hugely important.
1:00:12 - We know it's a part of society that's hugely underinvested in.
1:00:16 - So the consequential costs of trying to get that right are enormous.
1:00:21 - So you get these really big hot potatoes where the evidence is overwhelming.
1:00:25 - You can lay out all of the ROIs of this until the cows come home, the net positive impact it will have on the exchequer and health.
1:00:34 - Yet it's a very difficult political decision to make.
1:00:38 - It is.
1:00:39 - And take that one example.
1:00:41 - During my career in politics, the numbers were never presented to me as to the financial return in relation to that.
1:00:49 - The difficulty is Hildegard Nocton is the Minister for Education at the moment.
1:00:56 - Now, she has a finite amount of capital money.
1:01:01 - She has peered and screaming at her that they need classrooms for their children to sit in this September, next September.
1:01:09 - There's a huge amount of money being spent on leasing prefab buildings because of that pressure and the demand that's there.
1:01:19 - And the minister is saying, well, if I do this and retrofit every single classroom around the country, it means for probably the next 10 years we're not going to build a new classroom.
1:01:29 - And they're the calls that the minister has to make.
1:01:32 - So what she needs is the empirical evidence that she can go to the Department of Finance and say, actually, we're going to save money in the Department of Health as a result of this.
1:01:44 - We're going to save in terms of substitute teachers because teachers aren't going to be out sick.
1:01:51 - How much weight does that interdepartmental trading take?
1:01:55 - It doesn't.
1:01:55 - Because we often hear, oh, you know, air quality is the classic example of an interdepartmental problem.
1:02:02 - It's environmental, it's building environment, it's energy, it's health.
1:02:07 - And so often you say, well, look, just the savings in costs to the health department.
1:02:13 - But the difficulty is because the health department goes, yeah, OK, but unless I'm seeing this in my bank balance, I ain't giving you the money for this.
1:02:21 - No, and health isn't going to give it.
1:02:22 - And that's why you have to be able to try and pitch it directly to the Department of Finance, because health are not going to give you the money for that.
1:02:31 - And they're never going to give you the money because there's always going to be demand there.
1:02:34 - And no minister is ever going to give money back.
1:02:37 - But that's why you need to look at this outside of the silos and paint the bigger picture.
1:02:43 - And that's the great thing about the Sustainable Development Goals.
1:02:46 - is it is forcing the political systems in every single country to look at the broader issues, not just at each siloed government department, because the Sustainable Development Goals breaks us out of that thinking, because we're looking at, in terms of education, we're looking at the progression and education of young people,
1:03:09 - which requires improved air quality, which requires good teachers, which requires decent classrooms.
1:03:16 - You know, and it is those complex issues.
1:03:19 - And what about the other direction where you're looking at
1:03:24 - political policies and moves that you make a decision to go on.
1:03:30 - You put your political capital into because there's the public will behind it.
1:03:37 - It's a hot topic.
1:03:38 - You feel like this is a win that you can make.
1:03:42 - But then, you know, practically it's a very difficult thing to achieve.
1:03:45 - And, you know, I think retrofit is the well-known classic example of that.
1:03:49 - We go, right, okay, we're going to have 2 million buildings done by 2050.
1:03:52 - Boom, boom, boom.
1:03:54 - And you know, in your heart of hearts, that there's so many things have got to stack in your favour in order for that to hit.
1:04:00 - Skills, labour force, financing, you know, all of these things.
1:04:05 - And the chances, and, you know, we're living and breathing that, I think, and not just Ireland, but everywhere that's trying to achieve success.
1:04:11 - hard net zero goals politically you go well okay this is something i can sell there's broad agreement it's esoteric enough that i'm probably going to be gone before that yeah this is happening so there's another angle to this as well isn't there that the stuff gets put forward that that for all the best intentions uh let's put a positive spin on it
1:04:35 - are very difficult to achieve.
1:04:37 - Yeah, and retrofitting is a good example.
1:04:39 - Such a good example.
1:04:40 - Because I was the one that secured the funding back in 2018 for the retrofit programme that we have at the moment.
1:04:48 - And the commitment was to retrofit 45,000 homes a year.
1:04:53 - Unfortunately, we're not hitting that now at the moment.
1:04:55 - I remember the environmental NGOs kicking me and some of the journalists kicking me that it wasn't ambitious enough.
1:05:03 - And I remember saying at the time that I said the challenge we're going to have is actually to reach that target in terms of having the trades people and the skills to actually deliver on that.
1:05:17 - And I said to them, look, let's start delivering on the goal that we've set ourselves.
1:05:21 - And absolutely, if we can deliver on it, let's make it more ambitious.
1:05:24 - But don't be kicking someone for setting an ambitious goal and saying, oh, it's not ambitious enough when that was a target to date has yet to be achieved.
1:05:35 - Yeah, and sometimes it's public driving this or necessity.
1:05:38 - You know, housing's a good example.
1:05:40 - Health and waiting lists is a good example.
1:05:43 - There are these kind of policies and processes that are constantly put into place that are, if not impossible, certainly very difficult to achieve.
1:05:53 - In the real world, we call them stretch targets, right?
1:05:58 - And it's an interest...
1:06:00 - So it can be quite frustrating, I think, from...
1:06:03 - from the inside here, when you're struggling to get things that you think are realistic forward, that have science and expectations out of it, and then you see stuff going forward, or you go, good luck with that one.
1:06:17 - And one of the prime examples of that here in Ireland is this idea that we're going to have 80% renewable electricity on our grid by 2030.
1:06:25 - Like...
1:06:27 - Airgrids still don't have a plan on how they would actually achieve that by 2030, never mind actually deliver on it.
1:06:34 - And that was an objective where the evidence was it would have been really ambitious to get to 60% by 2030.
1:06:43 - And that was the direction of travel we were going in.
1:06:46 - But yes, the figure of 80% was picked out because it was a nice number to go for, but completely unachievable.
1:06:53 - And Daryl O'Brien is unfortunately the Minister for Energy that's going to be in charge of failing to meet that target.
1:07:00 - And the difficulty is now...
1:07:02 - do you wash your hands of it and say, well, look, we're not going to reach the target.
1:07:06 - So what's the point in reaching 60%?
1:07:08 - We put the investment in somewhere else where we will reach our target rather than having a realistic target that potentially could have been reached.
1:07:17 - Yeah, it's interesting.
1:07:18 - And industry very rarely operates that way.
1:07:22 - If something isn't possible, they figure out,
1:07:24 - what the new target looks like and how to achieve that.
1:07:27 - There's a realism in the real world that sometimes you don't see in these big political questions.
1:07:32 - And they exist in every department, health, finance, you name it.
1:07:36 - We all know they're there.
1:07:38 - It's a fascinating one.
1:07:40 - And you maybe think there's something else then as well.
1:07:41 - Yeah.
1:07:44 - Now, on the other side of it, while I'm on it, people would have said that it was unachievable to bring fibre optic cable to every home in Ireland.
1:07:52 - And we've done it, it'll be completed by the end of the year.
1:07:54 - So sometimes when you set an ambitious objective, then you can actually deliver on it.
1:08:00 - But there has to be an element of realism to it.
1:08:04 - And sometimes that isn't there.
1:08:06 - And the one thing about that is that it will be interesting to see down the road the evaluation that's done on that in terms of...
1:08:13 - of its impact on climate because of reducing emissions on people commuting and in terms of air quality.
1:08:20 - And yet, again, you know, the environmental NGOs kicked me around the place in relation to that.
1:08:26 - It's going to have no impact on climate, but it will and it will have...
1:08:29 - a long-term return.
1:08:31 - Well, if you think of the arguments that were happening about, you know, connectivity on the island of Ireland, and that was pre-pandemic, how important was connectivity five years ago, right?
1:08:42 - I mean, every business had to pivot, you know, you know, thankfully, we were at the very least were into three and 4G and, you know, connections that enable people to work from home in a crisis.
1:08:54 - And that that's a good segue into the thing I was thinking of and the
1:08:57 - The other thing I often say to people, not just in the research community, but in the advocacy community as well, the importance of pivoting on public sentiment and world events.
1:09:09 - Yeah.
1:09:10 - That things become hot button issues that enable you to pull a lever and move things forward.
1:09:16 - And if you don't have that flexibility to pivot and move quickly, you lose these golden opportunities.
1:09:22 - Air quality would have been fighting for years for codes of practice for air quality in the workplace.
1:09:28 - a pandemic comes around.
1:09:29 - an opposition motion comes forward for some kind of protection for workers in the workplace.
1:09:36 - And hey, presto, the Health and Safety Authority in two years have a code of practice for equality in the workplace.
1:09:41 - Would not have happened if it hadn't been for the pandemic.
1:09:43 - No, and it wouldn't have happened unless the legwork had been done by the people in terms of the research in advance of that and had already been engaging with the department.
1:09:53 - So that when the minister of the day went to his or her officials and said, OK.
1:09:59 - get me a solution here.
1:10:01 - They knew the people to pick up the phone and ring and say, have you a solution?
1:10:06 - Or do you know of a solution with your colleagues within this sector, somewhere else in Europe or somewhere else in the world?
1:10:12 - And that's why relationships are so important because things do happen and things do pivot very quickly.
1:10:20 - But if the relationships are already built between the academic community and the policy community, it's very easy to plug them into it.
1:10:28 - And, you know, the one example that I would always use is the work that we did with University College Cork on energy modelling when I was ministered.
1:10:37 - and they as a result of that when I needed to have a model turned around very quickly in terms of the climate negotiations I was involved with at EU level they were able to do that I knew because I had interrogated the evidence previously I knew whatever output they gave me I could credibly stand over and I was able to ultimately convince the commission that
1:11:01 - and my council of ministers colleagues to actually back the evidence that had been presented to me by University College Cork.
1:11:09 - But that relationship was already built and that trust was already there between my officials and University College Cork.
1:11:17 - And as a result of that with me.
1:11:18 - Yeah, I forget the professor's name down there in UC.
1:11:21 - Brian O'Gallagher.
1:11:22 - Brian O'Gallagher, yeah.
1:11:23 - Brian has done tremendous work.
1:11:26 - But Brian would make the exact same argument that I would make, that you need to be able to relate this back to people because it's public policy.
1:11:33 - Yeah.
1:11:34 - And, you know, I was only talking to Kieran Byrne there from SCAI a few months back on the podcast, and he was saying that this stuff is cyclical as well, that it's interesting we're coming into a fuel crisis or, you know, certainly been through a fuel crisis and almost certainly going into one of epic proportions this winter.
1:11:51 - the language changes, the frame of reference changes.
1:11:54 - So it might be the same subject, but there's a different world view and a different...
1:11:58 - So all of a sudden, energy security is the hot button issue.
1:12:02 - It's the same thing as sustainability, but...
1:12:04 - It's the exact same thing, but just a different frame.
1:12:06 - And it's no more than the point I made regarding air quality or in terms of the work that we're doing on the Climate and Clean Air Coalition.
1:12:14 - Yes, you may change how you frame it.
1:12:17 - The evidence doesn't change how you present it.
1:12:20 - That might change.
1:12:22 - Yeah, so that's probably a good lesson for not just researchers, for everybody.
1:12:30 - But, you know, evidence takes a long time to build.
1:12:33 - You know, everybody understands that the average TCP annex is five or six years.
1:12:37 - You know, that's a political cycle in a lot of cases.
1:12:40 - Right.
1:12:40 - So science moves slowly, but the world doesn't.
1:12:45 - And I think it's really important that people understand how you're communicating.
1:12:49 - Is it clear?
1:12:50 - Does it have context?
1:12:52 - Can people understand it in a frame of reference to the decisions they have to make now?
1:12:57 - And can you use that as an opportunity to leverage and move things forward if that's the goal of your particular research?
1:13:04 - You know, yeah.
1:13:05 - Exactly.
1:13:06 - And look, you just have to be the right person in the right place at the right time.
1:13:10 - But you have to have the evidence there to back that up and have the relationships built in relation to it in advance.
1:13:17 - And that's why it's so important that it's not just for the one hit that the researchers are engaging with the policy community or the policy community are engaging with the research community.
1:13:30 - This is an ongoing relationship.
1:13:32 - We have to travel this road together and
1:13:35 - because we will have more crises, we will have more emergencies, we will have more decisions to be made, sometimes on a blank sheet of paper.
1:13:44 - And if we can have people that can feed into that, maybe not black and white evidence, but evidence that showing this is the indicative way that we need to go, it will at least help in making those decisions and hopefully making the right
1:14:05 - So for people that don't know you, you're now not in politics.
1:14:09 - You're still involved in many of the institutions that you worked with.
1:14:14 - What do you do now?
1:14:14 - What's your role now?
1:14:16 - So what I do now is I work with researchers, research organisations and doctors.
1:14:22 - people within that sector and industry as well, helping them to take their research output and to convert it into a clear policy ask that has an impact in terms of funding, has an impact in terms of public policy and ultimately has an impact in terms of citizens.
1:14:40 - That's brilliant.
1:14:41 - And if people wanted to contact you, what's the best place to find you these days?
1:14:44 - So they get me on LinkedIn or is probably the easiest way to get in contact with me.
1:14:50 - Yeah, good old LinkedIn.
1:14:51 - Can't beat it.
1:14:52 - But it's been really good talking to you today, Dennis.
1:14:54 - I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule.
1:14:56 - Thank you, Sam.
1:14:57 - We're in UCD today, so thanks a million to them for offering us the space.
1:15:01 - I think it's very appropriate talking about research to policy to be in a university.
1:15:05 - Absolutely.
1:15:06 - And it's my old alma mater as well.
1:15:07 - Yeah, great.
1:15:08 - So you've got more meetings here today.
1:15:10 - So seeing some old friends and colleagues, no doubt.
1:15:12 - Thanks a million.
1:15:13 - I really appreciate you taking the time.
1:15:14 - Thank you, Simon.
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