Mr. Peter Walsh:

The projects go through a life cycle. When they have achieved planning approval, the appropriate planning authority in the State has determined that they are proper planning and sustainable development for the country and we do not double-guess that. We carry on and deliver the projects as approved. Projects that have yet to go to planning will have to be assessed in the light of whatever climate action plan is in place at the time when the board gets to assess them.

Currently, that is the Climate Action Plan 2023. All of our projects will have to address the issue of a reduction in trips on the network and the carbon consequences, including emissions, associated with that. We do not know exactly what will be required of a project. Under normal circumstances, we can only deal with the national road element of a national road project. More recently, we have looked at expanding the scope of projects. Slane was an unusual one because, in order to justify or explain why one would ever impact on a world heritage site, it had to be in the context of what one would do with the town being bypassed. As such, there needed to be an urban realm development. Of late, however, we have been asked to include the traffic management plans for the bypassed towns. We are not sure where exactly our involvement with that will be. For now, the design teams will be developing those traffic management plans. From that, there may be the possibility of reducing vehicular trips on the network as a whole or within the scope of the project. We would see the possibility of addressing the reduction in trips in that way.

We have developed a carbon assessment tool that will allow us to assess the embedded carbon required to construct the project and the emissions that can be expected over the operational phase. We feel we are moving along in our ability to conduct the assessment, but we are not entirely clear on the question of how it will be interpreted. Previously, An Bord Pleanála viewed projects within an entire programme and, if it decided that a project’s carbon requirements were acceptable, it regarded the project as being proper planning and sustainable development and approved it. That was a few years ago, though. Under the current Climate Action Plan, that approach may not be open to An Bord Pleanála.

I do not know if I have answered the Deputy’s question.