Climate Targets Set to Be Missed So Who Pays the Price?
Ireland is set to miss its legally binding 2030 climate targets by a substantial margin. The latest projections from the Environmental Protection Agency, published on 28 May 2025, indicate that planned policies and measures could deliver a reduction of just 23 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, against a statutory target of 51 per cent. The first Carbon Budget (2021 - 2025) is projected to be exceeded by between 8 and 12 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, and the second budget by a far wider margin of 77 to 114 million tonnes. Under EU law, Ireland faces a binding Effort Sharing Regulation target of 42 per cent, against which the EPA projects a maximum reduction of only 22 per cent. The Government itself now acknowledges that the 2030 target will not be met, with the Minister for Climate conceding that the targets will not be reached until "the early 2030s". These shortfalls raise questions that are not merely political but increasingly legal, engaging the mechanisms of judicial review, rights-based claims, and the emerging principle of intergenerational justice.
Statutory Duties and the Risk of Non-Compliance
The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021 transformed Ireland's climate commitments from policy ambitions into legally binding obligations, requiring the State to "pursue and achieve" by 2050 a transition to a climate-resilient, climate-neutral economy. The Act provides for a system of five-year carbon budgets proposed by the Climate Change Advisory Council and approved by the Oireachtas, together with sectoral emissions ceilings and annual Climate Action Plans. These are statutory duties, enforceable through Irish public law, and the consequences of non-compliance are severe: the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Climate Change Advisory Council have estimated compliance costs of between €8 billion and €26 billion, with more recent EPA projections suggesting the total could reach €28 billion.
Judicial Review and Strategic Climate Litigation
The 2021 Act creates justiciable obligations amenable to judicial review where the Government fails to adopt a Climate Action Plan consistent with the carbon budget programme or where such a plan lacks the sector-specific actions required. The foundational precedent is the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Friends of the Irish Environment CLG v Government of Ireland [2020] IESC 49, in which a seven-judge bench quashed the Government's National Mitigation Plan. Chief Justice Clarke held that "[w]hat might once have been policy has become law by virtue of the enactment of the 2015 Act", and the Court found the Plan fell "a long way short" of the specificity required, with significant policies described as "excessively vague or aspirational". The Court also gave "significant weight" to the Climate Change Advisory Council's conclusion that Ireland was "completely off course" to meet its climate obligations.
More recently, Friends of the Irish Environment brought a second challenge, this time to Climate Action Plan 2023, arguing it failed to comply with the requirements of the Climate Act. The High Court dismissed the challenge in February 2025, and the Court of Appeal upheld the ruling in March 2026, on the basis that the plaintiffs had not provided sufficient expert evidence to demonstrate a breach. Nevertheless, the Court of Appeal acknowledged that the climate crisis is "probably the single most important issue facing our society", and the rulings turned on evidentiary grounds rather than any rejection of the principle that climate action plans are subject to judicial scrutiny. As the gap between statutory targets and projected reductions continues to widen, the evidentiary case for future legal challenge grows stronger.
Human Rights-Based Claims
Beyond judicial review, a distinct and potentially powerful avenue of challenge lies in human rights law. The Supreme Court in the 2020 Friends of the Irish Environment case did not reach the constitutional or ECHR arguments, having already found the National Mitigation Plan ultra vires. However, the Court left the door open, acknowledging that "there may well be cases, which are environmental in nature, where constitutional rights and obligations may be engaged", particularly where brought by natural persons asserting the right to life or bodily integrity. Article 10(1) of the Constitution, which vests ownership of natural resources in the State, was also identified as a potential basis for deriving environmental obligations.
Under the European Convention on Human Rights, the landscape has been transformed by the Grand Chamber's landmark judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland (9 April 2024). The European Court of Human Rights held for the first time that Article 8 of the Convention encompasses a right to effective State protection from serious adverse effects of climate change on life, health, and well-being. The Court found Switzerland had violated Article 8 by failing to quantify a national carbon budget and failing to meet its own emissions targets, and also found a violation of Article 6. The KlimaSeniorinnen judgment applies to all Contracting Parties, including Ireland, and establishes that States must define clear, science-based targets with interim goals, sectoral pathways, and concrete evidence of implementation. These principles provide a framework for potential claims against the Irish State under the ECHR Act 2003, particularly given the scale of Ireland's projected carbon budget exceedances.
Intergenerational Justice
A further significant dimension concerns intergenerational justice - the principle that current generations owe a duty to protect the environmental conditions upon which future generations depend. The European Court of Human Rights in KlimaSeniorinnen expressly recognised this, emphasising that climate measures must be "genuinely feasible to avoid a disproportionate burden on future generations" and that the interests of future generations must be taken into account in the present. In the Irish context, the Climate Act requires that where emissions in a preceding budget period exceed the carbon budget, the excess is carried forward, thereby decreasing the next period's budget. Every tonne not reduced today becomes a burden on the budgets of tomorrow. The German Federal Constitutional Court recognised this principle explicitly in its Neubauer decision of March 2021, holding that deferring the steepest reductions imposed a disproportionate burden on future generations - reasoning approved by the European Court of Human Rights in KlimaSeniorinnen. Although Irish law has not yet developed a mature doctrine of intergenerational environmental justice, the building blocks are present, and as carbon budgets are consistently exceeded, the argument that current policy imposes a constitutionally disproportionate burden on future generations becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss.
Conclusão
Ireland's statutory climate framework creates justiciable obligations of a kind that did not exist a decade ago. The Supreme Court's 2020 decision confirmed that these obligations are enforceable, and the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment has opened a parallel avenue of rights-based challenge. With Ireland projecting a 23 per cent reduction against a 51 per cent target and carbon budgets set to be exceeded by tens of millions of tonnes, the scale of the failure represents not only a policy challenge but a growing legal exposure. The potential financial penalties of up to €28 billion are merely the most visible manifestation. The deeper question is whether the Irish legal system will prove equal to the task of holding the State to the commitments it has enacted into law.
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*Estas informações destinam-se apenas a servir de orientação geral e não constituem aconselhamento jurídico, nem devem ser consideradas como substituto de aconselhamento profissional específico para a sua situação.