Irish Examiner view: Climate Action Plan may be at odds with the needs of Ireland's economy 

The State needs to decarbonise to meet international CO2 targets but, if it is at the expense of infrastructure vital to the wellbeing of the Irish economy, that is another matter

Coalition leaders Eamon Ryan, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and Tánaiste Micheál Martin launching the updated Climate Action Plan last week. Picture: Maxwells

The Climate Action Plan, which was published this month, is an extensive document with impressive breadth and substance, in which the Government outlines its ongoing plans to reduce this country’s carbon emissions through sectoral emission ceilings.

It is, we are told, a roadmap for taking decisive action to halve our carbon output by 2030 and achieve net zero no later than 2050.

As might be expected of such an important document, it is a thorough examination — sector by sector — of how Ireland Inc will achieve carbon neutrality. 

But there is as much to be gleaned from what the document does not say as there is from what it does actually say, and in one particular area what it does not say is how much-needed infrastructural development is going to fare as the action plan unfolds.

The transport section of the plan outlines in great detail how targets have been revised to meet higher levels of ambition — including a 20% reduction in total vehicle kilometres, a reduction in fuel usage, and significant increases to sustainable transport trips and modal share.

Cork Chamber CEO Conor Healy and Limerick Chamber CEO Dee Ryan met near Charleville in September 2021 to highlight business support across Munster for the N/M20 motorway. File picture: Gerard McCarthy

This is all very well and commendable, but what the report does not indicate in any shape or form is which plans will have primacy when it comes to the building of vital infrastructure projects — the Galway ring road, or the new N/M20 Cork-Limerick road being examples.

We have already seen a complete debacle in Galway when An Bord Pleanála ditched a ring road plan it had already approved when it transpired the board had not taken the Government’s Climate Action Plan into consideration. 

The trouble was that the planning permission and land purchasing aspects of the development had been in train for many years before the plan came into being, and tens of millions of euro had been spent on the project before it was dumped.

Similar pre-development work has gone into the Cork-Limerick road project, and may now also have to be scrapped if the action plan regulations are discovered to have primacy over those previously outlined in the National Development Plan 2040.

The Coalition parties committed to a 2:1 ratio in investment in public transport in relation to roads in the 2020 programme for Government and to date, it is impossible to see if this has actually happened, but it appears doubtful. That same programme also committed to the building and/or redevelopment of various rail infrastructure, but not a single track has yet been laid.

It is all very well to conduct a decarbonisation programme which is very much needed if the State is to meet international CO2 targets, but if it is at the expense of infrastructure vital to the future wellbeing of the Irish economy, then that is another matter.

We need swift clarity on this issue, as there appears to be no commitment in the action plan for key roads and other strategic infrastructure as outlined in the National Development Plan.

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB