Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for his presentation. I have to say I struggle to keep track of whether we are on target, off target or ahead of target in the various areas. I am interested to know how this is done across government. I presume there is Cabinet committee and there are critical indicators that the Minister or Taoiseach tracks. Could this in some way be shared with the committee? Even though I take more than a passing interest in this, I struggle to keep up with it.

Similarly with regard to the Climate Advisory Council, which produces very good work and is submitting additional recommendations to be integrated in the 2025 plan, how are its recommendations collated by the Department across all the sectors? How are they integrated into next year's plan? Could we see in advance those that are under consideration? It seems to have mentioned many things. There is the electric vehicle fall-off now and we have not really delivered on the charging infrastructure which is still out in draft. It also speaks about buildings where we are missing the boat to some degree on shallow retrofits. It has mentioned 250,000 buildings which have been relatively recently built that could easily switch to heat pumps with a relatively low-cost impact. It has mentioned battery capacity and auctions for battery capacity, presumably to avoid curtailed power. We have not yet seen the wind guidelines. I struggle to keep up with the latest measures that we should be considering on which we should be holding Ministers other than the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to account. The committee has been given a role. It was envisaged we would have a more forensic role than we actually do. I am interested in hearing the Minister's take on this and whether we could do better.

I was interested in the Minister's point on the need for the national planning framework and the climate action plan to be more closely integrated. Perhaps I am wrong but my reading of the latest plan is that it has toned down a little the ambition for the four cities other than Dublin and is seeking more towns and villages that could facilitate integrated compact development. I wonder whether we have the capacity to think this out at the lower level. We have not really done it very well in the four cities other than Dublin, as the Minister rightly said. Where is this thinking being done about giving councils, if they are the ones to design these more integrated compact living settlements, the necessary infrastructure? Where is this happening in the system? That is a question I have on the national planning framework.

I have a very specific question. I have been looking to see the old marginal abatement cost, MAC, curves. I know some people do not like them but they give an indication of what different things might cost. I cannot find them any more in the plan. Have they been abandoned? They certainly give an idea of various sectors and what they ought to be able to do and where we might look for the next step if a sector is failing.

The European Green Deal is sending a lot of new frameworks shooting down the track at us, certainly in the construction sector where we will have to have whole-life assessment of emission impacts. We will have to look at embedded carbon and many other things. To what extent has green procurement become the leader in applying this? The State is acquiring large amounts of property. Have we got to grips with genuine green procurement which is pushing the envelope of where we go on these things?