Climate Action Plan
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Roderic O'Gorman (GP), Dublin West

I specified the date today because last year the climate action plan for 2025 was published on 15 April. At least last year there was there was some excuse for delay - there was a general election followed by the formation of a new Government, and the Minister needed to get a sense of his new Department. This year, those excuses do not exist and it starts to look like a lack of interest, a lack of urgency. With the Minister saying, as he has just done, that the plan will be published later this year, that sense of urgency is not coming across to me. By his own admission, Ireland will not meet its 2030 targets. I know he has been trying to reverse what he said over Christmas since then.
The climate action plan for 2026 is vital not just for this year but also for the next five years. Beyond trying to convince me about the importance of these steps for the Government, how can the Minister convince the Irish people if the central policy document for what happens next is delayed? He has given me a list of what brought us to here. Where we are is that we are behind our targets. The next big steps we need to see have to be set out in the climate action plan. The 2026 one is particularly important because it is the start of the next carbon budget cycle. We know we are a long way off and it needs to see some really big ideas, really big policies and how they will be funded within it. We are a third of the way through the year. We are losing time and we are losing the opportunity to implement these policies. Can the Minister give me any better sense of when it will come in?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16