Mr. Joe Boland:

Regarding interaction with planning, I set out a few strategic aspects at the start, including training, strategic collaboration, bottom-up, economic aspects and governance. The interaction between spatial planning and climate action is a very significant strategic aspect and is not without its complexities. For a sense as to what might happen in the future, all local authorities have been asked to nominate candidate de-carbonising zones. Deputy Cronin will be aware that in the case of Kildare, Maynooth has been so designated. That is where there is a concentration of adaptation, mitigation, biodiversity and good planning aspects. They could probably be regarded as a test bed for what might happen in the future. We are still awaiting guidelines on this but we would envisage that there will be a concentration of adaptation and mitigation measures in the areas of public realm, ensuring charging points are available, encouraging linkage with and the use of public transport, public lighting, local innovation and possibly local green enterprise. There is a concentration of measures along with good sustainable planning, particularly co-ordination with the regional spatial and economic strategy. Those de-carbonising activities will be a test bed for planning into the future. It is a very significant strategic aspect.

Infrastructure was referred to. Obviously, this would be a matter for future Government policy but there is provision in the public spending code and a methodology for calculating the carbon footprint of a piece of infrastructure. I can see this coming more and more to the fore in the future, particularly in the context of grants, but, again, this is a matter for Government policy.

The Office of the Planning Regulator was mentioned earlier. This office is taking a very active interest. The Office of the Planning Regulator reviews the plans of local authorities. In the case of Kildare, the entire local area plan was looked at significantly through the lens of climate action and I know the Planning Regulator took a particular interest in that.

We mentioned training earlier. One aspect of our training is thematic specialist training. One area that was identified - rightly so - at the outset was training in the area of spatial planning and climate action. Some 290 staff - mainly planning staff - have been trained to date. There is no question but that climate action is interweaving significantly with so many of our plans and programmes such as our local economic and community plans, economic development strategies and river basin management plans. We have a suite of specialist training in areas such as spatial planning and flood risk management where some 379 staff have received very specialist training to date. A training module in green procurement has been rolled out. We have already produced a specialist module on energy. I mentioned economic activity and local enterprise offices earlier. A lot of research has been done on that and the benefits of that will be rolled out significantly through our training programmes. I think the committee will appreciate that a lot is happening in that space. There is a lot of complexity there. Again, it is important to be strategic and to try to pull these things together at a strategic level be it through decarbonising zones, our training programme or various policies we have. I hope this is helpful.