Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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29. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the progress to date on the development of definitions to identify, track and reduce Government spending that may be having a negative impact on climate and environmental outcomes as contained within the 2023 Climate Action Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22090/23]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I would like to thank the Deputy for this question. The Climate Action Plan 2023 is the second annual update to Ireland’s national response to climate change and in it DPENDR have committed to developing and applying definitions to identify and track government spending that may be having a negative impact on climate and environmental outcomes.

A staff paper entitled ‘Review of Fossil Fuel Subsidies and other Potentially Climate Harmful Supports’ published in February 2023 represents the first step in fulfilling this commitment.

Having examined the various definitions of fossil fuel subsidies that are in use internationally, and considered the most appropriate definition for use in an Irish context, this paper defined a subsidy as any government support that confers an advantage on consumers or producers in order to supplement their income or lower their costs. A subsidy is considered to be a Potentially Climate Harmful Support if it is likely to incentivise behaviour that increases greenhouse gas emissions, irrespective of its importance for other policy purposes.

This definition was applied to identify fossil fuel and other potentially climate harmful supports in Budget 2023 on a subhead by subhead basis. The paper includes an inventory of expenditure subheads that meet this definition but it does not explicitly measure the impact of supports on the price of greenhouse gas producing activities, quantities consumed or emissions levels.

The identification of a subhead as a potentially climate harmful support does not mean that a programme is flawed or should be halted. Rather, it means that careful consideration should be given to determining if there are potentially better means of achieving the outcomes the expenditure supports.

Based on the results of this analysis, €1.9 billion allocated in Budget 2023 was considered to be potentially climate harmful. However, in several instances not all of the expenditure included in a subhead was potentially climate harmful, but the full subhead was included on the basis that a material portion of the spending was potentially climate harmful. Additionally, it should be noted that infrastructure provision is not included in this iteration of the review, nor are wider environmental impacts beyond climate mitigation considered (e.g. biodiversity). However, the provision of infrastructure investment was subject to a climate and environmental assessment undertaken by DPER in 2021 as part of the National Development Plan (NDP) Review.

For more information I would direct the Deputy to the full paper, which is available to download on the gov.ie website and contains more detailed results, including a the breakdown of potentially climate harmful spending across Government Departments.