Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 November 2023
Public Accounts Committee
Appropriation Accounts 2022
Vote 11 - Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement
Vote 43 - Office of the Government Chief Information Officer
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 5: Vote Accounting and Budget Management
9:30 am
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I am hearing an awful lot of jargon. I am aware of the shadow price of carbon. Let us not have smoke and mirrors on this. This is a key document on how we direct and spend public money for the public good, but at the moment it is entirely silent on climate and the life-cycle emissions impact. Deputy O'Connor referred to metro north. That is key infrastructure that should, in the longer term, have a positive contribution to make in driving down our emissions, and it should be a key consideration in process. It would feature in the NIFTI, but I am seeing it nowhere at all in the public spending code. When are we going to get concrete guidelines with respect to the public expenditure of money on huge projects that pays attention to the climate Act? What is the timeline?