Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to that report and the Minister might give me some indication as to the quarter in which it will be published. As usual, the reason I am sceptical is the delay. I want to praise the city council in Galway. It came up trumps. It was actually within the time limit and it identified the decarbonisation zone. I am from that area originally but am not in it now, although it is quite a big area so I will have to check. I know Shantalla and the area very well. It is beside the university and it is a wonderful example of climate change in action. However, it cannot be done without a properly resourced team. The county council, which we meet regularly along with the Minister's colleagues on a cross-party basis, continuously tells us that it is underfunded. As it cannot even manage to do the roads it is supposed to be doing, I do not know how it can manage this extremely important project. I am familiar with the Aran Islands. It is part of my constituency and I go out there regularly.

I welcome this positive news but the decarbonisation zone was identified by Galway back in 2018 or 2019. We are now in 2025 and I would like to know what progress has been made. Once again, I am not criticising the city council at all; I am asking the Department what monitoring will take place. Will it be monitored independently? What system would be in place for monitoring it? When the report is published later this year, who will give us that report? What markers will be there to show us how much has been achieved? Where are we in respect of our obligation on the 7% reduction? I can tell the Minister that the people of Galway were always ahead of us. Some 20 years ago they are asking us to have a zero-waste policy. We produced a plan in Galway city, which was actually rejected, where we were looking at zero waste. We had a public authority-run facility for recycling, reuse and so on, but the Government privatised it all and we went backwards.

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