More than 1.1 million Irish children had their education disrupted by climate-related events last year

Storm Éowyn in January 2025 led to school closures with some parts of the country facing longer impacts. Picture: Andy Gibson

More than 1.1 million children and young people in Ireland had their education disrupted by climate-related events in 2025, according to a new analysis.

Figures from Unicef found a tenth of students across the globe faced disrupted learning due to climate hazards, with 40 countries seeing multiple instances of school closures.

In Ireland, the headline figures came due to the dramatic events of Storm Éowyn in January last year, which led to countrywide closures of schools.

Head of advocacy and public policy at Unicef Ireland Aibhlín O’Leary said the numbers “probably do not capture the full story”, as some parts of the country faced much longer and greater impacts compared to the rest of the country.

Ms O’Leary said Unicef was calling on the Government to have education as central in terms of “longer-term climate resilience planning". 

“It is a global issue, and the statistics globally are really worrying, and we know for Ireland, going back to Storm Éowyn, there was a big response in terms of the National Emergency Coordination Group got together, they set up the transport education subgroup straight away, schools were identified as a priority, and that was fantastic,” she told the Irish Examiner.

“But what we are saying is it’s great to have that response at an emergency level, but what we need is for education to be central in terms of our longer-term climate resilience planning.

“And we can plan for and hopefully prevent, where we can, those climate-related disruptions to education."

She said where that was not possible and where there were major disruptions, there needed to be plans in place for continuity of learning.

Ms O'Leary said the data from Unicef helped put a spotlight on the fact this was a major issue.

“We need to see how we can ensure children can continue to learn during severe weather,” Ms O’Leary said.

“And we need to build recovery plans for children where their learning is interrupted.

“The likelihood is that this issue is not going to go away; it is probably going to increase, and so we really need the government to prioritise it,” she added.

Looking at the figures in a global setting, at least 171 million students experienced school disruptions due to climate events in 2025. 

Some 75% of those affected students are in low- and lower-middle-income countries.