Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-16
============================================================

Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

I oppose section 7 in its entirety as it displaces or disapplies our domestic climate legislation and it does not comply with essential functions of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015. Why have this Act and why sign up to the Paris Agreement if we are going to ignore our commitments to lowering carbon emissions and keeping global temperatures within safe limits? We are legally bound by the Paris Agreement and yet we are explicitly ignoring it within this Bill. Are we abandoning our climate objectives at this stage? Is the Government abandoning those climate objectives? Critical infrastructure must also include climate-positive projects such as clean, safe drinking water; public transport; and renewable energy expansion, three elements that are of crucial national importance.
Climate legislation should not be a barrier to the delivery of critical infrastructure, as section 7 appears to insinuate. It would be incredibly short-sighted of this Government to ditch section 15 of the climate Act in light of the unintended consequences the Whittaker report warns of such as ignoring judicial review for genuine environmental reasons or to challenge fundamentally flawed planning processes. Stripping away section 15 of the climate Act is a really blunt approach and it will not achieve what Government believes it will. Blocking or restricting access to judicial review is not going to magically open up the Government's ability to deliver on critical infrastructure projects.
Section 15 requires public bodies to have regard to climate action plans, carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings. Before the Houses agree to disapply obligations, the Minister should clearly explain why this step is necessary and what consequences will follow. Has his Department done a risk assessment of those consequences as they pertain to the Paris Agreement? I am particularly concerned about the potential application of this provision to future energy infrastructure projects. It would be helpful if the Minister would clarify whether projects involving fossil fuel infrastructure could benefit from these provisions and how that would sit alongside the State's other climate commitments. As he will know, we are massively failing on those commitments as it stands. I am concerned that we are doing very badly in this area and are already going to miss our targets. Are we going to face even more billions of euros in fines as we fail to meet the commitments we made back in 2015?
The deletion of section 7 will not impede the delivery of critical infrastructure. It will simply ensure that public bodies continue to consider climate impacts when exercising their functions under the Act.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:03+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-16