Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

For these meetings I have been trying to get Departments to provide in advance their additional projects that would help close the gap. We would then debate them and identify the better ones which are most economic, offer the best social benefits, etc. None of the Departments have done that yet. Given that we are in this process with the European national energy and climate action plan, and given that we need to have additional measures, the Secretary General of the next Department to appear before the committee needs to come in and outline those measures.

Following this meeting, Mr. McCarthy should present analysis in written form as to what the emission reductions would be from the currently planned or even a scaled-up version of deep retrofit of buildings and rough cost abatement curve in terms of what it will cost. I bet it would be the winning project and Mr. McCarthy would scoop the pot. The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government should be doing it but it should be carbon-led and not just the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

I was very keen on the memo that Mr. McCarthy had from the forum his Department has with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and other Departments on the implementation of the national development plan because Marie Donnelly from the European Commission recommended that there should be a monthly meeting of top civil servants on the climate issue, reporting to Government every month, with much more significant quarterly reports. We seem to have something close to that structure in place with the forum, but it needs to realise that the NDP needs to completely change and really implement what was set out in the NPF, which the current NDP does not do. We need to turn the NDP forum into a national climate forum for senior civil servants because this is the big game for the public service. If we do not achieve this turnaround in our approach, Europe will roast us.