Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Actions committed to under the Climate Action Plan 2023 are reported on through progress reports prepared by the Department of the Taoiseach and published quarterly. In 2023, my Department reported on 10 actions in total, and provided final updates on the delivery status of these actions for review in early January.

Pending final confirmation from the Department of the Taoiseach, it is anticipated that the delivery rate of CAP23 commitments for my Department will stand at approximately 50%, with three ‘high-impact’ actions delayed.

I am satisfied that the majority of these outstanding actions are subject to short-term issues and they will not impact on our ability to achieve my Department’s emissions reduction targets.

The delayed high impact actions include the publication of two roadmaps – these are the roadmap for the decarbonisation of industrial heat in manufacturing and the roadmap on the retrofit of commercial buildings.

Drafts of both roadmaps have been produced and are being considered by the relevant Working Groups under the Heat and Built Environment Taskforce. They are expected to be presented to the Taskforce and published in Q1.

A further action, to identify actions to accelerate and drive system wide delivery of industrial heat decarbonisation, will be completed alongside the roadmap for the decarbonisation of industrial heat.

The third high impact action for delivery in Q4 was the completion of a report on ‘Reducing embodied carbon in cement and concrete through public procurement in Ireland’. Final edits are being made and it is expected that this action will also be completed in Q1.

While it is regrettable that a higher proportion of CAP23 actions were not able to be completed before the end of 2023, the four delayed actions are fully drafted, at final stages of negotiation and agreement and will be completed by the end of Q1 2024. One other delayed action assigned to the NSAI, to develop a certification scheme for energy efficient retrofit of dwellings, has been delayed until H2 2024 due to a high demand for construction products certification and an effort to focus on delivery in that area.

For actions under the Climate Action Plan 2021, my Department had a completion rate of 92%, compared to a cross-Government average of 79%. A process was undertaken to determine the future of each incomplete action. Some actions were deemed high impact enough to retain and incorporate into CAP23, while others were merged to increase their impact and included as new actions. Others they were deemed too low impact or represented business as usual for the department and therefore no longer required reporting.