Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-16
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

This amendment removes section 33. As I said, section 33 is yet another disapplication of the climate Act. This is becoming a pattern. The Government seems to acknowledge that the climate Act exists but thinks it does not apply to anything it wants to do. That is not how it works. It is not how climate works. It is not how climate science works. Emissions do not stop hitting the atmosphere because the Government has a really good reason why it wants to do something. That is not how it works. It is damaging the credibility of the Government, a Government that is going to be representing Europe at the Conference of the Parties, COP, in Turkey later this year, if it says that we have a climate and development Act but disapplies it all the time.
This amendment would replace section 30. The new section 30 would keep the application of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. We do not have time to go through it because of the guillotine, unfortunately, but amendment No. 28 sets out what it means to be thinking about the sectoral emissions ceilings and the carbon budgets when it comes to the management of gas. We spell out all the many ways that what is going to happen here is likely to be extremely relevant for the purposes of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. There are so many ways in which the Act is relevant to what is being proposed and it is being disapplied. As I say, because of the time limitations I cannot go through the list of ways but this is really dangerous. It is not just symbolically bad. In practical terms, it is a very poor decision. It will lead to a number of subsequent poor decisions within the construction, planning and operation of the facility. There are so many points at which this project should be checked against the climate Act - not just in the general concept of it but in its operation and construction. Instead of doing that, instead of checking it repeatedly against the climate change Act, at each decision point we are suspending it altogether.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:17+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-16