Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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93. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the way he will ensure that the pipeline of road transport projects he plans to fund in 2025 are individually and cumulatively assessed for their impact on the transport sectoral emissions ceiling set under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9528/25]

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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What will the Minister do to ensure the pipeline of road transport projects he intends to fund in 2025 are individually and cumulatively assessed for their impact on the transport sectoral emissions ceiling set under the climate Act 2021?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for this important question on transport sectoral emissions. My Department's national investment framework for transport in Ireland, NIFTI, sets out modal and intervention hierarchies to achieve transport objectives. One of the four priorities is decarbonisation and as such, the sponsoring agency of any road project must consider any potential positive or negative impacts of a given project in relation to decarbonisation. The sponsor must also demonstrate that a given option is the most environmentally sustainable and cost-effective solution for the issue at hand.

As part of our NIFTI framework we have also developed and published the transport appraisal framework, TAF, which sets out the detailed framework for how all transport projects must be assessed. Under the TAF, climate change impacts are one of the seven appraisal criteria for intervention. As part of the development of a project's business case, each individual project is also assessed for strategic policy alignment under which the project's alignment with climate policy, including the relevant climate action plan, is considered. All of this assessment is published as part of the publication of the business case.

In developing the sectoral emissions ceilings as part of the Government's climate action plan, the impact of the NDP's planned investment in the roads programme was considered in the modelling scenarios undertaken. A refresh of those modelling scenarios is under way again this year as part of the development of climate action plan 2026 and will again include analysis of the roads programme.

The Deputy will no doubt acknowledge that investment in our roads programme promotes regional accessibility, facilities economic competitiveness, supports a town centres first approach and improves road safety. Our ongoing efforts to decarbonise the vehicles using the roads network is an important focus over the short to medium term. Significant investment is under way to accelerate the roll-out of EV charging infrastructure across the network.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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It is really important that they are cumulatively assessed and not just on an individual basis. The Government has inherited an overshoot in the transport emissions budget as well as our broader carbon budgets. Due to the climate imperative, the previous Government had a spending ratio of 2:1 for public transport versus roads and invested €1 million a day in active travel infrastructure. Can the Minister commit to sticking to that? If the Government is off course in relation to emissions targets, the Minister is obliged to provide and propose corrective actions. What actions might the Minister take to implement the recommendations of the IFAC and Climate Change Advisory Council today in their joint report? Will he refresh the concept of EV grants, for example and reduce the cost of say, 700,000 new electric vehicles on our roads?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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There is a balance to be struck here. I am glad the Deputy mentioned the CCAC and IFAC contribution today which I very much welcome. It does show the challenge in a growing economy. Thankfully we have full employment. Deputy Pa Daly already mentioned his view that there are infrastructural deficits and there are as well. We need to build more roads and we need more investment in rail. We will do that with the refresh of the NDP but the climate action plan is central to all of that. In the past two years we have seen a reduction in emissions of about 6.6% last year even while the economy was growing. That is a really important tipping point. The targets are exacting by 2030.

On EVs and EV grants, I will look specifically at them and review them to see if they can be improved. I think they can but we have only commenced that work. Charging infrastructure is really important. I will be making announcements in the coming weeks to roll out additional charging infrastructure. I might return to the active travel question the Deputy raised in another supplementary.

Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour)
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It is encouraging to hear that. To the extent the Minister might be considering refreshing the EV grants, I hope it will be purely for EVs rather than hybrids. The transport sector is wildly off course. We feel there is a need for accelerated and urgent demand management measures and the implementation of ambitious active travel and public transport measures that can bridge the emissions gap by 2030. The Minister said we have reduced emissions, but we are required to reduce them by 20% over the period 2021 to 2025 and by 50% from 2025 to 2030. We would query how the building of additional roads rather than opting for more sustainable measures such as rail and light rail infrastructure is going to help us reach those targets.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy mentioned a number of things. On active travel, earlier this year he will have seen the NTA announcements, with very significant funding. Tomorrow, I will announce additional funding for greenways, improving the permeability between towns and villages. This is a successful programme and we want to expand it, and that is embraced by communities too.

In respect of EVs, I am not just going to review the grants; I intend to improve them. We have not concluded the work on that. The Deputy will have seen that in the past two weeks, we have announced the EV taxi grants, which have been fully subscribed, and we can continue to change our public fleet, including our buses and bus network, across the board. We have also announced the first electric motorbike grant, in which, again, there has been a lot of interest. There is much we can do on the transport side while we are still building new roads, which we need to do too. We have just had a brief discussion on the Adare bypass, and anyone in that region around Limerick and the south west will understand the importance of that piece of road infrastructure as well.