Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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561. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the specific actions he has undertaken under the the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 to contribute to the national mitigation plan. [25690/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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I refer to the reply to Questions Nos. 72, 81 and 584 of 9 May 2017 which address the development of the National Mitigation Plan. 

The objective of Ireland’s first National Mitigation Plan is to set out what Ireland is doing, and is planning to do, to further the national transition objective set out in the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, 2015.

Following a statutory public consultation in March and April, work on the development of the first Plan is nearing completion and I intend to submit it to Government for approval in early June. The draft Plan has been prepared having regard to the provisions set out in the 2015 Act in close collaboration with all relevant Government Departments and, in particular, with the Ministers responsible for Transport, and Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use. The Electricity Generation and Built Environment sectors are dealt with in my own Department. Work on the Plan has been overseen by an inter-Departmental National Mitigation Plan Steering Group, as well as by both the Senior Officials Group, and the Cabinet Committee, on Infrastructure, Climate Action and the Environment. Technical support has been provided to all the sectors by the Technical Research and Modelling Group which operates under my Department.

In addition, I invited the Climate Change Advisory Council, following my publication of the draft National Mitigation Plan, to engage directly with me and with other relevant Government Ministers with a view to providing its recommendations to feed into the preparation of the final Plan. All input received from the Advisory Council has being considered in finalising the National Mitigation Plan.

As well as mechanisms to ensure inter-Departmental cooperation, I also recognise the need to engage wider society more generally with the climate challenge, motivate changes in behaviour, and create structures at local, regional and national levels to support the generation of ideas and their translation into appropriate cost-effective actions. To progress this, I recently announced a National Dialogue on Climate Action to provide for an inclusive process of engagement and consensus building across society towards enabling the transformation to a low carbon and climate-resilient future. 

It must also be recognised that the first Plan is a work in progress, reflecting the reality of where we are in our decarbonisation transition having regard to a number of factors including curtailed public and private investment ov er the course of recent years. The first Plan cannot provide a complete roadmap to achieve the national transition objective to 2050 but it will begin the process of development of medium- to long-term options to ensure that we are well positioned to take the necessary actions in the next and future decades. This will be an ongoing process aimed at incremental and permanent decarbonisation. The Plan will become a living document accessible on my Department's website, and will be updated on an on-going basis as analysis, dialogue and technological innovation generate further cost-effective sectoral mitigation options.  The Plan will also be subject to annual progress reports.