Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

My concern is also the way it is drafted. Section 19(2) begins: “The National Planning Framework shall contain a statement setting out the Government’s broad national plan in relation to the strategic planning and sustainable development of the State .. securing national and regional development strategies, including maximising the potential of the regions”. That could be interpreted that the objective is to maximise the potential of the regions and this is part of the strategic planning of the State and that sustainability can be done elsewhere. The problem is we are nowhere near best practice in sustainable development. We are miles away. Embodied carbon is a massive contributor to our whole-life carbon emissions from development. It makes a huge contribution to our carbon emissions. We do not even measure whole-life carbon or embodied carbon in what we build. We are nowhere near what we need to be doing. We need to have limits on it. We need to have incentives to move towards more sustainable building practices, to use less carbon-intensive materials and less carbon intensive concrete more. Concrete is being used all over Ireland in development, maximising potential in our regions, which is high-carbon concrete when there is no reason and low-carbon concrete could be used. It is fine to say this is all being done and it is in the legislation and everything is great but it is not being done. We are miles behind where we need to be. We are missing our carbon emission targets as a country. We are heading towards massive fines. We could better use that for funding sustainable infrastructure, sustainable developments, sustainable housing and everything else. I just do not accept that what is happening now means we are somehow best in class. We are actually laggards compared to some other countries in this. We need to get the wording in the legislation right.