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

That is the great value of the climate action plan. The current draft climate action plan is out for consultation at the moment. That details where we are on a sectoral basis and where we are with the delivery, or indeed the non-delivery, of targets. The action plan, and all the work that goes into the preparation of its draft, is having a significant effect on the discussions under way in Government around the allocation of capital funding. The fact that, in the current NDP, climate related activities and public transport have such a share of overall capital spending of the State is a reflection that even before we began to develop climate action plans, these issues were germane to expenditure decisions that would be made. A Cabinet subcommittee oversees the annual publication of these action plans and since we have begun to go through them rigorously, it is having a big impact on the tone of how we evaluate where we put the resources of our country.

As for infrastructure guidelines, the revised new infrastructure guidelines are now in place. This is due to a number of decisions I made to the oversight of the NDP and changes I began to put in place last year. The new infrastructure guidelines ensure that, for example, climate and environmental performance is now an explicit element of the preliminary business case for significant capital decisions that Government make. The Accounting Officers of the different Departments who are involved in capital decisions now must pay greater heed to the impact on climate and carbon emissions. That change has been made. I say to Deputy O'Rourke that, in fairness, it will probably take some time to see what the impact of the change in the guidelines on capital decisions will be, given that it only happened recently. I am currently engaged in some work with my officials around the shadow price of carbon and how we can change that. I believe it will complement the changes that have been made to the infrastructure guidelines.