Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will address all the members of the committee as Deputies, as to be equal.

To address the first question, if I was to pick any area that I believe is exceptionally important to the future of the NDP and how we can make it more sustainable, I would probably pick one process and two projects. The process would be the thorough implementation of the revised infrastructure guidelines that I referred to and the conclusion of our work on shadow carbon pricing. If I was asked to pick two strands of Government expenditure, I would identify where we are with the national retrofit plan and, to make the obvious point again, state that we would not be able to do something of that scale if it had not been for the changes that we made in carbon taxation. I believe it is of gigantic value for winning the public argument around the kind of changes we must make now and in the future if we can point the same public to the efforts we are making to invest in warmer homes for people. I think we are making good progress on it - better progress than I thought would be made, to be honest. It is good and important progress of great political and social value.

Finally, I would identify the work we are trying to do on public transport. This work is projects that are back-ended in the NDP, simply because of the challenges that are there and the amount of work that must be undertaken from a planning and tendering point of view. Whether it is other cities across the country and the ambitions that the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Government have in relation to light rail in question, or whether it is what we are trying to do in the city of Dublin - for example, the long standing ambition to build a metro - they are projects that are vital. As this committee probably knows better than I do, it is transport that, over time, will prove our greatest challenge in realising our climate ambitions. I think the progress we are making in a few other areas gives us great hope for the future.

To call out where we are with our engagement with the EU, a big part of the national recovery and resilience plan, which is under way with the EU, refers to the climate. I briefed Government only a few weeks ago on where we are with the REPowerEU portion of the recovery and resilience plan for Ireland, which is funded by the European Union budget and is now worth €240 million. That, for example, is looking to make and fund investments in greener public transport and also in the retrofitting of important public buildings. While the contribution the EU is making in expenditure is important and a valuable addition to what we are doing, to be candid, given the fact that we are now a net contributor to the European Union and given the scale of the NDP that we are funding ourselves, which we should be able to do, it is a low share of the total value of what we are aiming to do. The vast majority of what we need to do we can and will be paying for ourselves.