An Interview with Environmental Justice Solicitor Rebecca Keatinge by Emma Bowie

An Interview with Environmental Justice Solicitor Rebecca Keatinge

By Emma Bowie, JS Law

Rebecca Keatinge is an environmental justice solicitor working with the Community Law and Mediation Centre (CLM), an independent, community-based organisation that works to empower individuals experiencing disadvantage by providing free legal information, free legal advice, education and mediation services.

What drew you to working in the area of refugee and migrant rights after completing your History and Political Science degree in Trinity?

After my undergraduate degree, I moved to London and did a master’s degree in international development, and as part of my course I had the opportunity to study migration and development theory. I then interned at the UN Refugee Agency in London with their public information unit. The protection team there worked on legal cases, which I found really interesting. After my internship, I started working as a caseworker for an organisation in London which provided asylum-seekers and refugees with legal aid … It was a great way of getting experience in that area of law, without needing to be a fully qualified solicitor. In the UK, an accredited caseworker can appear before tribunals and present cases and bail applications, and that was a great learning curve in terms of advocacy. Having the opportunity to work with individual applicants was a real privilege, especially as they would often share details about their personal journeys and situations.

After working with the organisation Refugee and Migrant Justice, you undertook the training required to become a solicitor in Ireland. Why did you decide to pursue a legal education after working with an NGO?

When I was working in that sector, I could see that there was a glass ceiling in terms of what I could do as an accredited caseworker. Ultimately, if you want to bring an application for judicial review, or represent a client in the higher courts, you need to be a qualified solicitor. The team of solicitors working with Refugee and Migrant Justice would bring judicial review applications of decisions relating to the cases that I was working on. They would also bring as applications to the Home Secretary - sometimes in the middle of the night - with the purpose of preventing deportations. It was really exciting and impactful work, and I knew that a qualification was necessary if I wanted to progress down the legal route.

I think the legal route is quite attractive in that you can advise someone as to the outcome of a net issue, and achieve positive change at an individual, micro level. I started studying for the FE1s while I was working with the UN Refugee Agency in Cambodia on sabbatical from my job in London, and sat my exams when I returned to Ireland. For me, the human story at the heart of a legal case is where it is at – even when you’re studying law, it is the stories behind the cases that help you remember them, be it the snail in the bottle or obscure maritime scenarios! That was definitely one of the things that attracted me to law … I also knew that with a legal qualification, I could work outside of refugee and immigration law, and help other communities experiencing disadvantage.

You were recently appointed as the new Environmental Justice Solicitor of the Community Law and Mediation Centre in Coolock. Could you tell us about the aims of the recently established Centre for Environmental Justice? CLM is forty-five years old this year, and is firmly rooted in the social justice sector in Ireland. Over the past couple of years, the Centre has been seeing environmental issues become more prevalent in its own work, while also observing the emergence of climate justice movements in countries such as America, the Netherlands, or

Interview Page 80 France. CLM decided to do the groundwork in Ireland and set up the Centre for Environmental Justice with the aim of meeting unmet legal needs relating to environmental concerns. That may sound quite lofty, but when you look at the issues that CLM has been engaging with, such as housing, health and employment concerns, many of these can be traced back to environmental health issues. For example, living in an apartment that is badly insulated or is not retrofitted may lead to the aggravation of an existing respiratory condition. CLM aims to look at these issues through a different lens, and provide legal advice and representation to individuals effected by such issues.

The Centre also provides legal support to community groups and NGOs on environmental law issues, as well as training and capacity-building through community engagement. We will be working on law reform and policy issues, and hope that the casework we do will ultimately influence our existing law and inform policy issues. The strength of the centre is that it is being set up within the existing structure of CLM - we are not re-inventing the wheel or setting up a new entity. I am grateful that CLM already has an established training system and a profile in terms of law reform.

Before working with CLM, you were the Managing Solicitor of the Mercy Law Resource Centre, which provides free legal advice and representation to people who are homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless. In light of your experience, could you explain the relationship between climate change and housing inequality in Ireland?

All of our homes need energy, and while at a political level we are having discussions about how we can heat our homes in a more environmentally-friendly way, where people are living in poorer housing that discussion is rarely had. We need to join those dots – at Mercy, I met many people who were living in poor housing conditions and there is an environmental health dimension that needs to be considered there. We are now seeing retrofit schemes being rolled out by the government, and CLM’s concern is the accessibility of those schemes for the people we are working with – can they reduce their experience of disadvantage and social exclusion? We are really encouraged by the government focusing on local authorities in rolling out retrofit, and that is great if you are living in a social housing estate that is going to be targeted by the scheme. However, we also need to consider those who are living in private rented accommodation and are in receipt of housing assistance payment. If that tenant’s landlord is not willing or financially able to avail of retrofit, they may find themselves in fuel poverty. At the broader policy level, we need to ensure that people are not disproportionately burdened by energy costs by virtue of living in a home that hasn’t qualified for retrofit. In my past work, I would have also frequently heard people’s concerns regarding lack of access to greenspaces. The location

Interview of social housing in relation to busy roads and greenspaces is definitely an issue which we are mindful of at CLM.

In your opinion, are there any pressing legal or policy reforms which are necessary to ensure the protection of the rights of marginalised groups disproportionately impacted by climate change in Ireland?

The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2020 is due to be published shortly, which is to be welcomed. In November, CLM partnered with Saint Vincent de Paul and the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice to make a submission on the Bill, calling for a strengthening of its language to ensure that climate justice is properly defined. We also recommended that a stronger obligation be placed on the government in terms of meeting the specific needs of communities who are either particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change or the measures being introduced to address climate change. Our submission also emphasised that just transition should be at the centre of the state’s response, so that our move towards sustainability brings everyone along with it in a fair and equal way. We see that with the Bord na Móna peat station closures in terms of workers’ rights, but just transition can also apply much more broadly. The third limb of our response focused on public engagement and ensuring that the Bill obliges the State to meaningfully allow for public participation in decision-making. We see the Climate Bill as a really important opportunity to ensure that there is engagement with communities who are experiencing disadvantage.

Air pollution is an issue that has already come to us through our clinics, and we’ll be looking at that from an individual perspective too. We are currently drafting our submission in respect of Eamon Ryan’s smoky fuel public consultation, with a focus not only on the effects of air pollution, but the impact of banning smoky fuels on communities who are dependent on those fuels and cannot access alternative sources on the other - a holistic perspective is very much needed.

“All of our homes need energy, and while at a political level we are having discussions about how we can heat our homes in a more environmentally-friendly way, where people are living in poorer housing that discussion is rarely had. We need to join those dots – at Mercy, I met many people who were living in poor housing conditions and there is an environmental health dimension that needs to be considered there.”