Last week, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, showed that spending in Ireland is generating 75% more emissions than the conventional measure. I want to ask the Minister about his green procurement strategy. The only data I have seen are a couple of years old and show that Ireland is well behind other European countries. I would be interested to know whether the Minister can move to implement green principles in 100% of procurement, as has been done in Holland. There are huge opportunities to cut down on emissions across buildings, canteens and transport.

It is absolutely the case that the public sector has an important role to play in reducing our carbon emissions and in the more efficient use of our energy, whether that is in terms of our building stock, the procurement practices we follow, the nature of the goods and services we buy but also with regard to the national development plan and prioritisation of climate-friendly projects all over Ireland.

We have done that in a number of ways, for example, through prioritisation of active travel and of investment in public transport infrastructure over road transport infrastructure. We have a green procurement initiative led by the Office of Government Procurement and will in the course of the climate action plan 2023 set out further detail about the implementation of that.