Government appoints 4 Ordinary Members to the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC)

The government has appointed 4 ordinary members to the Climate Change Advisory Council (CCAC). The members will assist the Council in its activities, including advising Ministers and government on climate policy, conducting annual and periodic reviews of progress in furthering the achievement of reducing emissions as well as proposing carbon budgets to the Minister.

The 4 Ordinary Members to be appointed are:

• Prof John Gilliland for a period of 5 years with effect from 29 July 2026
• Dr Matthew Kennedy for a period of 5 years with effect from 29 July 2026
• Mr Luke O'Callaghan White for a period of 5 years with effect from 29 July 2026
• Dr Muireann Lynch for a period of 5 years with effect from 12 October 2026

These nominees will bring a wealth of knowledge to the Council, each providing expertise in their own fields across agriculture, energy, transport and policy matters.

Commenting on the appointments, the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O'Brien said:

ENDS

Section 8 of the Climate and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 established the Climate Change Advisory Council on a statutory basis on 18 January 2016.

The appointments take into account:

• Statutory requirements of the relevant act (that appointees shall have a broad range of expertise and competences required to carry out the council's functions)
• Provisions in the relevant act to ensure gender balance and continuity of council membership (staggered terms of 3 to 5 years)

Prof. John Gilliland

Prof. John Gilliland is Professor of Practice for Agriculture and Sustainability at Queens University Belfast and is a special adviser to the UK's Agriculture Horticulture Development Board. As an alumnus of the US International Visitor Leadership Program, Prof. Gilliland is highly respected and recognised as an excellent leader and communicator across the breadth of the agri-food and sustainable land management sectors.

He is an award-winning farmer and one of the world's leading voices in agricultural sustainability. Prof. Gilliland has recently received the International Award for "distinguished service on the International and National stage in the field of Food and AgriBusiness". He has extensive experience in the area of Agriculture, including time as President of the Ulster Farmers Union; a Non-Executive Director of the Scottish Rural College (SRUC), and as an Energy Regulator in Northern Ireland. He has also served as a policy adviser for devolved, national and European governments on biotechnology, climate change and sustainability.

Prof. Gilliland chaired the UK's Rural Climate Change Forum for a period of 7 years, reporting directly to the Secretary of State of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), London, and supporting the UK at COP15 in Copenhagen. While Director of SRUC in Edinburgh, he helped set up their very successful Carbon Management Centre.

In his role as Director of Agriculture and Sustainability of the Irish livestock nutrition company, Devenish, which he held for 7 years, he led the development of the their research farm, the Lands at Dowth, transforming it into both a Lighthouse Farm for Wageningen University and Research Global Network of Lighthouse Farms, and a Living Lab, in a project called Heartland, with 5 PhD students, in partnership with WUR and UCD, and funded by the EU's Marie Curie Programme.

He has contributed to public discussion on carbon neutrality and has taken part in Teagasc Signpost Seminar discussion on how to proactively improve human and environmental health through good science in the context of achieving carbon neutrality within the agri-food system.

Dr Matthew Kennedy

He has served as the European Union's Lead Negotiator at the UN Paris Agreement (COP21) negotiations and previously chaired the UN Environment Programmes Climate Technology Centre. Before joining IDA Ireland, Dr Kennedy was a Global Director at Arup, leading sustainability and climate services across transport infrastructure, buildings, cities, and energy sectors.

He has served as the European Union's Lead Negotiator at the UN Paris Agreement (COP21) negotiations and previously chaired the UN Environment Programme's Climate Technology Centre. Before joining IDA Ireland, Dr Kennedy was a Global Director at Arup, leading sustainability and climate services across transport infrastructure, buildings, cities, and energy sectors.

Dr Kennedy holds a PhD in Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, along with master's degrees from NUI Galway and University College Dublin, and serves as a Non-Executive Director.

Luke O'Callaghan White

Luke O'Callaghan-White leads the EU Transition Programme at E3G, an independent international climate change think tank with the goal of translating climate politics, economics and policies into action.

Mr O'Callaghan-White serves on the steering committee of the Coalition for Energy Savings, a leading European non-profit association focused on energy efficiency. He is also a board member of the European Alliance to Save Energy. Mr O'Callaghan-White is a committee member of the Irish Centre for European Law, where he contributes as an expert in European energy policy developments.

Previously, Mr O'Callaghan-White was the Programme Manager for energy and climate policy at Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based think tank. Prior to this, Mr O'Callaghan-White was the senior researcher at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), where he led the Institute's research on climate and energy policy. Previously, he was a researcher at a research institute based at the University of Toronto. Mr O'Callaghan-White has written widely in this policy space, and his publications have been covered by the press in several European countries.

Mr. O'Callaghan White holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a BA in Political Science and Geography from Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Muireann A. Lynch

Dr Muireann A. Lynch is a Senior Research Officer and Research Area Coordinator for Energy and Environment at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), where she leads and conducts policy-relevant research in energy economics, climate policy evaluation, and energy-systems modelling.

Dr Lynch's work focuses on the economics of energy transition, including electricity-market design, multi-sector decarbonisation pathways, the integration of variable renewable generation, hydrogen and alternative fuels, and the interaction of climate policy with behavioural, energy and economic systems. Her research portfolio includes long-term energy-systems modelling, optimisation, equilibrium modelling, behavioural analysis, and cross-sectoral climate-policy evaluation.

Dr Lynch's recent publications cover residential retrofit cost-disruption trade-offs, public acceptance and social dimensions of the energy transition, distributional impacts of carbon taxation, electricity-system adequacy under uncertainty, long duration energy storage, multi-vector integration and energy poverty identification using machine learning.

Her peer-reviewed work appears in Energy Policy, Energy Economics, Applied Energy, Utilities Policy, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Nature Energy, Climate Policy, and other leading journals.

She has substantial public communications experience and has frequently participated in media interviews in both English and Irish across radio, television, and podcasts. Dr Lynch has published over a dozen Opinion and Editorial columns, with climate and energy policy forming the large majority of her media engagements.

Her interdisciplinary background means she has extensive experience bridging gaps between disciplines, ensuring that economic and technical analysis translates into real changes in investment and behaviour by households and businesses.