Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. This is an issue on which I would be really happy to engage further with the Deputy because it is going to be at the heart of the new national development plan. I will outline what the climate and environmental assessment of the plan involves. As a first step in the climate and environmental review of the national development plan, Departments are required to perform a qualitative assessment of every measure they are putting forward for inclusion in the revised plan against each of seven climate and environmental criteria, including climate mitigation, climate adaptation, water quality, air quality, waste and circular economy, nature and biodiversity and just transition. The cumulative score of each measure across all outcomes will be used to assign a traffic light style rating to the measure. This assessment aims to give Government a high-level view of the compatability of all measures being considered for inclusion in the national development plan with broader Government climate and environmental policy. The assessment will inform the resource allocation decisions that will need to be taken into account in the context of the review of the national development plan.

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