Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister’s reply and what he set out, but I think he will agree that a monitoring and reporting system is absolutely essential. Galway City Council is in trouble when it comes to housing. It has many priorities on its hands, including traffic congestion. It seems that climate action is not getting the attention it deserves. I can understand that to a certain extent. However, we declared a climate emergency in 2019, which the Minister knows better than me. In 2021, he sought applications for a decarbonising zone. The city council did its job there and it sent that in but here we are three years later and nothing has happened. I know the decarbonising zone will be part of the climate action plan, but the Minister can imagine my frustration, and I am sure he shares it, at how long it is taking after we declared a climate emergency. We need transformative change. That will not happen with management under pressure on so many other issues. It needs to be led by the Department and the most essential part of that is a monitoring and reporting system.

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