The numbers in the Dáil vote on the Critical Infrastructure Bill last week were what shocked me the most: 132 voted in favour of it and only 15 against. This is the complete opposite of the level of support for the climate law back in 2022 – and for a Bill that can be seen only as a serious attempt to weaken that climate law. The Bill was passed with undue haste and no pre-legislative scrutiny, which explains why it went under the public radar. Although we do need to speed up Ireland’s planning and legal systems, the massive planning law agreed two years ago already provides a way to do just that. The purpose of this new Bill is instead to weaken environmental rights and remove any climate impediment to building new infrastructure, especially the roads that this Government wants to build.
Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers was clear in the Dáil debate about wanting to undermine the recent Supreme Court decision in the Coolglass case, which recognised the importance of section 15 of the climate law, requiring a climate assessment of major projects. He was no doubt also mindful of a similar Belfast high court judgment last year, which effectively stalled the A5 Road project. This Bill is designed to work around those two decisions – and thus dilute the climate imperative within our legal code.
Chambers said he wanted to avoid endless legal wrangling but he may have created a worse mess. His approach leaves a contradiction in place. The climate law had both belt-and-braces protections in place to ensure future governments stick to the task. Section 15 of the law was the belt but it was backed up with braces, in the form of a requirement for Ministers to account to the Oireachtas for how they will change policy, if their sectoral emissions are off target.
When this Bill is enacted we will have a bizarre situation where the State and individual Ministers still have challenging climate targets to meet, but the Government and the vast majority of the Opposition are inviting An Coimisiún Pleanála to ignore those targets when it comes to making decisions on infrastructure.
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The real tragedy is that an alternative approach is now available, with new Cork metropolitan rail, BusConnects and Luas projects all in advanced states of planning, with widespread public support
Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien has the biggest problem because his sector has the greatest gap. By putting new roads ahead of public transport, the Government is making matters worse. Even with electric vehicles, a roads-based approach inevitably leads to higher emissions because of the sprawled development it brings. It also fails in transport terms, with higher running costs, poorer health outcomes, more road deaths and inevitable gridlock. It fundamentally undermines the case for public transport, which cannot easily serve the dispersed housing that comes with increased car dependency.
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The Bill was introduced in the same month that the Galway ring road was approved by An Comisiún Pleanála. Building the road will kill the case for the Galway Luas, which was a much better solution to the city’s traffic problems. Just when smart cities all over the world are moving away from the car, Galway is going all in, becoming more like a Texan city, wrapped in a shawl of roadside retail parks, paved parking lots and long-distance commutes.
There is a similar risk for other cities, as the proposed Limerick-to-Cork motorway will be next up. It will come to a dead end near Cork city centre and makes sense only if you also build a north Cork motorway ring road to allow that traffic to escape, thus condemning Cork to repeat the mistakes made in Dublin around the development of the M50.
The real tragedy is that an alternative approach is now available, with new Cork metropolitan rail, BusConnects and Luas projects all in advanced states of planning, with widespread public support. In Limerick and Waterford, new bus and metropolitan rail services could also be built quickly, if the political will was there. Dublin has the permissions needed to double the Dart service, build a Luas line to Finglas and deliver the long-promised BusConnects corridors.
All those public-transport projects are now being held back by a lack of funding in the Government’s revised national plan. They are not even providing current expenditure for ready-to-go rural and urban bus services, at a time when congestion is becoming a nightmare.
So what to do? We could start by having a proper Dáil debate on climate, asking for the updated climate plan that was due six months ago. The Oireachtas transport committee should then focus on fulfilling its legal mandate by asking O’Brien how he intends getting transport emissions down.
We could also ask those who voted for the Bill why are they undermining our climate ambition in this way – just when the latest oil crisis and most recent assessment of climate tipping points shows the madness of taking such a course.
