The Minister for Climate Change is being urged to set up a citizens' convention on how Ireland will handle the issue.

Denis Naughten is the first member of an Irish Government to be given the portfolio.

Following his appointment, a group of academics have written to him to outline the extent of the task ahead and asking that action be taken to inform citizens of the seriousness of it.

Barry Mullins, Dean of Engineering at DCU, says the population needs to agree on how we will give up our fossil fuel addiction.

"It would reach into every highway and byway, every local community, every town, every city in the country," he explained.

He says it would offer "citizens and community groups the opportunity to learn what the nature of the choices ahead are, and that that would feed into a 20 or 30 year vision for how we're going to escape our addiction to fossil fuels".

Professor John Sweeney added that "we believe that only such a large-scale convention will allow the sustained, citizen-led, engagement that is now essential to unite all of society in embracing and designing our critically urgent transition to a secure, just, democratic and authentically sustainable post-carbon world".