The constitutionally protected rights to life and equality have been cited in a High Court challenge to the Government’s climate action plan.
A Dublin-based law centre and three individuals, including a child, on Monday secured permission from a High Court judge to seek a legal declaration that the 2024 update of Ireland’s climate action plan is invalid. The plan sets out a roadmap for the State to halve emissions by 2030 and to reach net-zero no later than 2050.
However, Community Law and Mediation CLG and its co-plaintiffs allege the plan is too weak to comply with the carbon budget programme and international obligations. They point to recent calculations from the Environmental Protection Agency projecting that the State will “substantially” exceed its greenhouse gas emissions targets.
They allege the Minister for the Environment and the Government prepared and approved the climate action plan in breach of the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act.
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The Government should not have approved the plan as submitted by the Minister and instead should have requested an amendment or modified it to ensure it complies with the 2015 Act and the carbon budget programme, the plaintiffs say.
They claim the Government cannot rely on unquantifiable or unspecified future measures to meet its statutory obligations and to ensure the climate action programme conforms with the carbon budget programme. They also allege the plan violates and fails to vindicate the fundamental rights of the three individual plaintiffs as well as people living and yet-to-be-born on whose behalf the law centre works.
Various articles of the Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights are cited in the case, which is against the Minister for the Environment, the Government, Ireland and the Attorney General.
Represented by FP Logue Solicitors, Community Law and Mediation CLG is pursuing the action alongside Saoirse O’Connor, a climate activist and a student with an address in Kilnaclasha, Skibbereen, Co Cork; and Philip Kearney, a retired psychotherapist and a climate activist living on Richmond Road, Drumcondra, Dublin.
The case is also being taken by a boy, suing through his mother, who cannot be named due to a court order made because of his age. On behalf of him and other children (including those yet to be born), the challenge invokes article 42A of the Constitution, which affirms the State’s duty to uphold childrens’ natural and imprescriptible rights.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys granted the plaintiffs permission to proceed with their case, which he said was of “some complexity and difficulty”. The State parties have yet to be given a chance to respond to the plaintiffs’ allegations.
In a sworn statement to the court, Rose Wall, chief executive of Community Law and Mediation CLG, said the non-profit organisation is committed to climate justice and has long worked with disadvantaged communities.
She said the climate crisis is of an “existential and transcendental nature” such that the rights and interests of future generations, particularly those from deprived backgrounds, are at issue in this case.
The action, challenging the most recent plan, follows on from a case initiated last year by Friends of the Irish Environment over last year’s version of the plan. The court heard the earlier lawsuit remains live.
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