Translating research into decisions, a ministerial view

When politics gets messy, good modelling brings focus.

Last week I attended the Research for Policy Seminar Series hosted by the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute to listen to a presentation by Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir on his experience of working with both civil servants and politicians over the last 15 years as Ireland has grappled with its climate challenges.

I attended not as a commentator from the sidelines, but as someone who relied on the work of the team headed by Brian at the MaREI Centre in Sustainability Institute, University College Cork (UCC) when I was trying to address the many challenges I faced as Minister in the climate and energy areas.

I took office just after Ireland’s Energy White Paper was published, and I was immediately thrown into EU negotiations on the revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Renewable Energy Directive. Within weeks, Brexit arrived, and with it a mountain of energy security risks. Then in August 2016, climate was added to my portfolio. That brought the implementation of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, negotiations on the EU Effort Sharing Regulation, a revision of the EU Emissions Trading System, as well as moving Ireland’s first Clean Air Strategy from aspiration to reality.

On paper, those would be anyone’s top priorities. In practice, as Environment Minister, the issue that kept me awake at night was waste because on more than one occasion we came within hours of having to stop bin collections due to the lack of capacity. That is the truth of governing. You juggle the long game with the immediate fire, and you do it under scrutiny.

So, I needed all the help I could get, and as minister, one of the tools that helped me to choose, defend, and deliver was the clear modelling delivered by the UCC team, using energy systems modelling that had been developed to inform energy and climate mitigation policies in Ireland, the Irish TIMES model. They did not present me with a lecture in equations, but instead a model that provided a simple visual which paired numbers with consequences.

Here is why it mattered. Policy is a chain of choices. Every link introduces trade-offs that will be tested in Cabinet, in parliament, in Brussels, and in the media. When I asked my officials a pointed question, they worked with the UCC team to shape a focused run of their model. One issue at a time, with a clean graphic that could travel from an internal briefing to a negotiation room. As a result, I could look a colleague in the eye and say, this is not a hunch, this is our pathway and here is the pinch point. Could the model answer everything? No. The officials had been in the room with the modellers in UCC. They knew the strengths and the limits of the model. When I pushed, they could say, Minister, the model cannot do that, and even that clarity about the model’s restrictions provided a level of comfort.

This modelling didn’t replace political judgement but it sharpened it. Good modelling draws the boundary between what the data can tell you and what leadership must decide. I needed to weigh up many moving parts, and while graphs did not make the decision for me, they did give me a clearer picture of the risks I was taking. That is all you can ask of any tool.

But the numbers did more than guide domestic choices. They became a form of science diplomacy. During the 2030 climate and energy talks, by showing the UCC graphic to a German ministerial colleague I was able to clearly explain Ireland’s trajectory and our constraint. Latvia and Lithuania faced similar challenges. Their ministers used the same graphs to make a similar case to the European Commission. The argument did not win because it was Irish. It won because it was transparent, consistent, and easy to interrogate. That is how small states build coalitions. You bring evidence that others can pick up on and, in some instances, apply to their context. You invite scrutiny, and in the case of the UCC model my officials went to Berlin to go through the data behind the graph, explaining the detail of the challenge Ireland faced. Ultimately, at a late-night EU Council meeting, with my German colleague rowing in behind me, the Commission accepted the Irish position and that of my colleagues from Latvia and Lithuania.

There is a deeper lesson here. We often outsource difficult questions to consultants and expect definitive answers. You get a glossy deck, but you end up with less capacity in the public service as a result. The UCC approach did the opposite. It built understanding inside the government department. Officials learned what the model could say, and what it should not try to say. That changed the conversation. Meetings moved faster, options were framed more honestly, and we wasted less time arguing about shadows. I will say it plainly, that kind of co-production makes the public service more intelligent.

This work also raised the standard in our parliamentary debate. When we established the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action, I wanted TDs and Senators to have the same information I had as Minister. We could still disagree on the path, that is politics, but we should begin with the same facts. When committees saw the same visuals and the same assumptions, the quality of opposition proposals improved. They challenged me on the merits, not on ideology. And while that is what a healthy democracy should be about, in my experience over 27 years in parliament, such an approach was the exception rather than the rule.

Some might ask, was the model flexible enough for the messiness of politics? It was not, but the newer generation of the model, developed on foot of the questions that the first iteration failed to answer, helped to address this by allowing for more parameters. It is also important to note that, because of the effectiveness of the first model to the political and policy system, the new TIMES model was directly funded by the Department itself. Showing the value of research to both policy and decision-makers is key to driving investment in research, a point that I made to the European Commission in a recent submission.

Ireland’s climate challenge is complex, but not mysterious. It is a set of choices that can be framed, tested, and improved. The UCC team helped us do that when it counted. Their work did not sit on a shelf. It sat at the centre of negotiations, in committee rooms, and on my desk when tough calls had to be made. That is what success looks like in the real world. Not a perfect model. A useful one.

We will need more of this in the years ahead. Faster cycles, cleaner visuals, deeper engagement. Keep the science rigorous and the storytelling clear. Keep building capacity inside the state. And keep asking the question that matters. Does this help a minister make a better decision on a Tuesday morning? If the answer is yes, then you are not just informing policy. You are shaping it.