Lip-service or a lasting legacy on climate?
Just a few months into his second term, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s hard-earned climate reputation is hanging by a thread, writes Oisín Coghlan, Public Policy Advisor to the Stop Climate Chaos coalition.
Yes, the Programme for Government affirmed the commitment to a 51 per cent reduction in polluting emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050 at the latest. In other words, to uphold the law his previous government passed through the Dáil by 129 votes to 10.
However, it betrayed a certain ‘climate cakeism’ or wanting to have both your established climate targets and your most polluting industries too. This concern has been amplified by the recent Climate Action Plan 2025, which simply does not contain enough new concrete actions to close the emissions gap to our legally binding limits, and by the key decisions and statements the Government has made in its first few months.
This Programme for Government is clearer than ever before on the need to get off fossil fuels, stating it “is committed to taking decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”, “expensive imported fossil fuels” as it calls them a few pages later. And yet the first big decision the Government made was to accelerate plans for a state-backed LNG import-terminal, without waiting for the analysis the outgoing government had commissioned on possible alternatives. The timing and haste of that decision, just before Micheál Martin went to the US for St Patrick’s Day, fuelled suspicion that the real motivation was to make an offering to the new Trump administration.
Leaving that aside even, why did the Government scrap the 2021 policy statement that prohibited LNG infrastructure rather than amend it to specifically allow a state-owned emergency reserve? The result is to open the door to other, commercial LNG terminals that are designed to increase gas demand and gas use, not to provide emergency back-up. This is despite the fact that the Government’s own Energy Security Review in 2023 concluded that gas use would fall significantly over the next 15 years and that there was no role for commercial LNG in providing energy security?
One of the proposed uses of that new gas is to power more data centres. Indeed, while in the US, the Taoiseach said the “demonisation of data centres” must end. But they already use 21 per cent of all our electricity, on track to 30 per cent by 2030, compared to an EU average of less than 3 per cent.
While the CRU says the Climate Action Plan does not give it the power to regulate data centre emissions it also reports they are now competing with new housing developments for limited electricity connections. So, the Government will have to choose which is its top priority, tackling the housing crisis or facilitating fossil-fuelled AI.
Meanwhile, the sector making least progress to cut pollution is transport. What has happened to the draft Moving Together strategy to reduce traffic congestion and pollution? It was prepared by the Department of Transport in 2024, including a public consultation, but was not approved by the Cabinet, in what was reported as a ‘heated meeting’, just before the election was called. Has it been shelved by the new government? If so, what alternative are they proposing to meet the legally-binding sectoral emissions ceiling?
The next six months are crucial. We will see the latest figures from the EPA, the latest analysis and recommendations from the Climate Change Advisory Council, the adoption by the Dáil of the Carbon Budgets for the 2030s and the 2026 Climate Action Plan, which one official said will need to be “seismic” to meet the budgets.
The next Action Plan is likely to answer the question of whether Micheál Martin has just been paying lip service to the climate emergency or whether he is serious about building a legacy of “decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels”. Has his climate rhetoric reflected true conviction or just convenient plámas? If he fails to live up to his own hype, his government is likely to end up in court under its own climate law.
