Mr. Garret Doocey:

I thank the Deputy for the question. In the context of project appraisal, the issue of carbon savings and carbon emissions forms part of the quantified analysis of every preliminary business case submitted to the Department. The business cases go through the public spending code decision gates for detailed business cases and, prior to that, procurement strategy. As they come through the project decision gates, the business cases that are developed for each of our projects are required under the public spending code and the common appraisal framework to demonstrate and quantify their carbon emission savings. The earlier stage may be somewhat linked to some of the Deputy's thoughts in his question. This is where we would see elements of the national investment framework for transport in Ireland, NIFTI, coming into play because it allows us to take a whole-of-transport perspective on various issues and to consider within a common framework what various interventions could do in those investment hierarchies. Once a project enters an actual appraisal process, this is elaborated on and it goes into much more granular detail. There is a dual aspect to it.