Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are many of them. We are engaged in a review of capital expenditure that will culminate in the ten-year capital plan at the end of this year. However, if I pick out any particular area of Government expenditure, I will then have every Department other than my own contacting me to know why I have not named it, so I am not going to do that now. I will make just one very broad point which stretches across all Departments. Given climate change and the climate change mitigation plan that was published yesterday, Ireland will have to find new ways of responding to that challenge. We have to be on the right side of that issue. For the generations to come and for those of us who can already see the effects of climate change, we need to be in a better place on that issue. That will affect every Department and it will also affect the capital choices we have to make. I have said, at the national economic dialogue and in the Dáil, that we have to find a new way of responding to that in what we are doing at present. Much of the achievement we made in delivering our targets was due to the fact that our economy was dealing with a horrific crash.

As it is moving into a different phase, we have to deal with climate change in a new way that will affect everybody.