Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

None of us might be here so the Deputy should not pre-empt the decisions of the good people of Dublin Bay North. Regarding what the Government has done in the budget, every element of Government expenditure in every Department has come in on foot of a bilateral relationship - the Deputy might consider it unfortunate that the senior Minister is not here - and the policies are whole of government policies. There is green budgeting already incorporated into this year's budget. The Deputy need only consider the continuation of the vehicle registration tax VRT relief for hybrid cars, the decision of the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport to continue investing in green buses whereby the bus fleet that will be bought by the State under Project Ireland 2040 will be of a green nature, and our commitments to phasing out Moneypoint and the extraction of peat. Those are all issues that will be transformative in reducing our overall emissions of carbon dioxide.

Regarding agriculture, and I had a discussion on this with another Deputy representing an urban area over the weekend, the farming community and the agricultural sector are playing a huge part already in making Ireland far greener. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in its bilateral relationships with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in which I am the junior Minister - I know the Deputy regrets that the senior Minister is not here replying to him - have climate action mitigation measures in place.

See this speech in context