Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2025-11-12 ============================================================ Holly Cairns (SD), Cork South-West Longest term friends. In her inauguration speech yesterday, Catherine Connolly said climate change is one of the greatest challenges of her time. President Connolly intends to make this a key focus of her Presidency, and I really welcome that. This is especially important given that climate change has fallen way down the Government's agenda. I am sure the Taoiseach will deny that but the facts are the facts. This Government is on course to spectacularly miss its climate targets. I read the speech the Taoiseach delivered at COP30. I agreed with much of it, but I found it hard to square his climate rhetoric with his climate inaction. He implored world leaders to "tell it as it is" and told delegates "we have to go further", but failed to admit we have no hope of meeting our own climate targets. The previous Government committed to a reduction of 51%, but then it made a plan that would at best give rise to a reduction of 23%. On what planet is that in line with what he said at COP? Separately, in a recent discussion with John Collison, the Taoiseach suggested that some climate projects will have to be shelved because they risk polarising society. However, he failed to outline which projects are going to be scrapped. I want to give him an opportunity to clarify those comments and tell us which projects are not going to go ahead. Will it be public transport projects, renewable energy projects or those involving investment in native forestry? What exactly is the Government going to scrap? Climate inaction represents a missed opportunity for Ireland. We are a small country but we could be a world leader in this area. Instead of scrapping projects and missing targets, we could be developing new technologies and championing green industries. We could turbocharge investment in offshore wind and protect our waterways. We could become the gold standard in sustainable agriculture. This Government is failing at all of that. We see a lot of short-termism in politics but this is the area in which it is most irreversible and, therefore, most unforgivable. Failing to take real climate action is a betrayal of future generations who will ultimately end up paying the price. There will be a climate protest this Saturday, starting at 1 p.m. in the Garden of Remembrance. I ask everybody who cares about this issue to come out and make their voices heard because this Government is not listening and we are hurtling towards climate chaos. In advance of the protest, will the Taoiseach tell us how he is going to get to 51%? What climate projects is he going to scrap? --- 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/dail/2025-11-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:05+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-11-12