James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the information. I am not necessarily coming here with a wrecking ball, but the State has put everything into the national development plan that we intend to build in all facets of infrastructure. It must, though, consider other plans put forward by the Government. My great concern is that, if we look at the calculations for the capital development of new projects around the emissions of those projects, I understand the Department of Transport and the agencies within it would be tasked to the 2018 emissions levels. If we look at those levels, they will show us very quickly that not much was going on in terms of major capital development projects in infrastructure in 2018. I refer to projects at an advanced stage and where a great deal of heavy activity was under way. Building public transport and roads involves the use of a significant amount of machinery and manpower, from a mechanical and emissions perspective. It would be worthy to look at this aspect, because we need to know if these targets are realistic.

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