Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We are doing good work in our political and governance arrangements regarding how we tackle climate change. The scale of this challenge is beyond compare, however. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, yesterday stated that a reduction of 2% is required every year in the next decade. We then have to ramp that figure up to a 7%, 8% and 9% reduction per annum in the following decade. Many of the investments that we make now, particularly in transport infrastructure, will determine what happens in those subsequent decades. The national development plan agreed last June had no climate assessment done on it whatsoever. Many of the projects in that plan will hinder rather than help us in reaching those long-term net zero carbon reduction targets. Will the Minister now review the capital spending projections in the national development plan and in Project Ireland 2040 in that regard? Will he then also reconfigure the spending so that it does meet our climate objectives within the iterative process that the Minister, Deputy Bruton, is now setting up in the action plan for climate?

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