A group of climate and legal experts have expressed “extreme concern” over a delay in publishing the updated national Climate Action Plan.
The five academics wrote to Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Climate Darragh O’Brien expressing concern about the holdup and O’Brien’s explanation for the delay.
“We wish to state plainly and unequivocally that, in our informed view, there is no basis in science and no discernible basis in law for [his] assertion,” they wrote.
O’Brien acknowledged the plan was delayed but said it was on the way.
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The climate action plan sets out the State’s long-term emission cutting goals and the measures needed to achieve them.
It is meant to be revised annually to update targets and introduce new initiatives to keep those goals in sight. It is generally published in advance of the new year but there has been a drift under the current Government.
Last year’s version was delayed until April, and a spokesperson for the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment said a draft of this year’s version would be brought to Government “later this year”.
The five signatories to the letter are John Sweeney, emeritus professor at Maynooth University; Barry McMullin, emeritus professor at Dublin City University; Prof Hannah Daly, of University College Cork; Andrew Jackson, of University College Dublin; and Paul R Rice, postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University.
In it, they reminded the Taoiseach and O’Brien the Government was obliged to produce an annual update under the Climate Act of 2021.
“It is critical to understand that any delay to mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions increases both costs and impact risks,” they said.
The department’s spokesperson said work was continuing on implementing measures from the 2025 plan.
This plan provided “a strong framework for delivery of climate action”, the spokesperson said.
However, the Environmental Protection Agency has said the measures adopted and planned so far would see Ireland miss its legally binding 2030 emission cutting targets by more than half.
O’Brien earlier this year also accepted Ireland would miss those targets.
His department’s spokesperson said the 2026 plan needed to take account of the post-2030 period and the carbon budgets that will set out the remaining emissions Ireland can produce in the next decade.
The process of determining those budgets and their implications for the various sectors in society and the economy was delayed, the spokesperson said.
“The delay in the carbon budgets also means that the next update to the Climate Action Plan is also delayed,” they said.
“Work has commenced on the next Climate Action Plan in anticipation of the outcome of this carbon budget programme process ... with a view to bringing a draft to Government later this year.
“It is the Minister’s intention that it will also be a more focused plan, identifying strategic, realistic, high-impact actions that will be delivered over the course of the budget programme, rather than annual actions, with short-term horizons.”
The letter writers argued actions lost impact the longer they were delayed and said there was “an extraordinary failure of national climate governance”.
“Earlier, deeper, transformative mitigation action allows much greater societal benefits to be realised,” they wrote.
“The primary focus of CAP26 (Climate Action Plan 2026) has to be on bringing forward new, additional and accelerated actions to deal with overruns in the current carbon budget.
“There is no sense in which such entirely parallel statutory processes of carbon budget adoption or revision must, or should, delay CAP26.”
The Taoiseach’s department did not provide a separate response.
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