High Court rejects environmental group’s challenge to Government’s 2023 climate plan

An environmental group’s bid for a strike-down of the previous government’s climate action plan has been dismissed by the High Court.

In a judgment, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the 2023 climate action plan contains “considerably more detail” than the 2020 version, which was quashed by the Supreme Court for being too vague.

Both cases were taken by the Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE), which also has a live challenge to the 2024 climate action plan.

The annual plans set out a roadmap for staying within the State’s 2021-2025 legally-binding carbon budget, which is the total emissions permitted for the period.

FIE’s challenge to the 2023 plan alleged it lacked detail showing how the State will secure compliance with climate objectives and targets. This was a breach of the 2015 Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, it claimed.

The State, represented by Catherine Donnelly SC, contested the claims, arguing the “detailed” 2023 plan “more than meets” the legal requirements.

The plan demonstrates specific actions for emissions reductions and is underpinned by a “very concrete evidential basis”, she submitted on behalf of the Minister for the Environment, the Government, Ireland and the Attorney General.

Rejecting the case on Friday, Mr Justice Humphreys said FIE bore the onus of proof, but its case contained “fairly generalised complaints about the lack of detail”.

FIE did not sufficiently engage, by way of legal pleadings or expert evidence, with the granular detail of the plan, he said. The group’s complaint of a lack of justification for figures contained in the document “does not get off the ground” where it has not made any real attempt to engage with the material in the plan, the judge said.

FIE’s approach of “launching upon the court a detailed textual exegesis of the plan”, without expert evidence of its own, “cannot be the correct procedure”, he said.

Mr Justice Humphreys said the 2015 Act “demands a fair bit more than a merely reasonable plan – it must be a plan that ensures compliance with carbon budgets and sectoral [emissions] ceilings”. However, total certainty as to future compliance with carbon budgets and sectoral emissions ceilings is “definitionally impossible”, he said.

The judge stressed his decision was based on the facts, pleadings and arguments in FIE’s case.

“What this judgment most certainly is not is a finding that Ireland’s climate ambitions are on track,” he said.

Various environmental and scientific reports highlighted by FIE are “consistent with the view that delivery of necessary measures is well-off-course, and inferentially that urgent and significant additional action is required”, he said.

However, FIE’s case was not pleaded or argued in a way that would permit the court to overturn the 2023 plan.