Climate Scorecard Other Organisations Recommendations - The Labour Party

 

“The council, since its inception, has made a huge number of recommendations in annual reviews. If even a proportion of those had been taken up in full we would not be in the mess we are now; both in terms of our resilience to climate change and in terms of our dependency on fossil fuels.”

• Professor Peter Thorne, chair of the Adaptation Committee of the Climate Change Advisory Council, in 2026.

 

The government ignored 78% (150 of 192) of priority recommendations on the environment and climate action made by the Climate Change Advisory Council, SEAI, the European Commission, and the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. The recommendations we examined were made at the latest in 2023, in order to give the State a reasonable timeframe for implementation. 

 

It ignored 88% (58 of 66) of the recommendations in the 2023 annual review published by the Climate Change Advisory Council, a body established on statutory footing for the express purpose of providing the government with expert advice on climate matters.

 

The priority actions identified by the EU Commission in 2022 for the government merely outlined what Ireland would have to do to comply with existing standards and obligations, and the government still ignored 30 out of 41 actions (73%).

 

The 2018 SEAI Heat Study laid out 14 actions Ireland could adopt to meet its climate action ambitions in the area of heat. Ireland has ignored half of them, and of the seven they took on board they have only fully implemented three. 

 

The Citizen’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss brought together a wide group of stakeholders representing Irish society and produced a report making ambitious, specific recommendations to the government for restoring biodiversity. The government has ignored 77% of them (55 of 71). 

 

The recommendations included in the analysis were those that met a threshold of specificity where whether they had been undertaken or not could be reasonably established. They were also recommendations made directly to the state, rather than other stakeholders such as actors in private industry. 

 

The recommendations were coded as implemented, committed to, ignored, or delayed. The first two categories go toward compliance, the latter two are categorised as non-compliance. The table below breaks this down further.

 

For a full breakdown of the SEAI’s identified actions, click here.

For a full breakdown of the Climate Change Advisory Council’s recommendations, click here.

For a full breakdown of the EU Commission’s identified actions, click here.

For a full breakdown of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss recommendations, click here.