In 2019, the Dáil declared a “climate and biodiversity emergency”. In the 2027 Budget there is very little sign that this emergency, now surely much more evident than ever, is being addressed.
On the contrary, most environmental experts and NGOs have read the budget measures – and the lack of them – as very retrograde steps. They make the rhetoric about the vital importance of a stable climate and healthy ecosystems to Ireland’s economy and society sound hollow indeed.
The Government does face grimly exceptional pressures on energy prices due to the Middle East conflict. But the U-turn on the carbon tax trajectory sends completely the wrong signal to the public about the urgency of weaning consumers and businesses off fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the failure to commit any ring-fenced funding for the forthcoming Nature Restoration Regulation seems a drastic blow to the credibility of the most important effort to reverse landscape degradation that the EU has attempted. This funding had been vocally championed by the Minister of State responsible for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan. He has now indicated that this may materialise at a later date. But it is still necessary to ask why such a crucial package for biodiversity did not figure in the budget.
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The Government is pausing carbon tax increases due on petrol and diesel this month. It has promised increases in 2027, but given the unpredictability of the US-Iran war, coupled with the Government’s willingness to capitulate to transport protests, these are not done deals. Meanwhile, it has reduced carbon tax on home heating oil and gas, and committed to no further increases whatsoever in this area during its term.
Given the degree to which other climate-friendly initiatives, such as retrofitting homes, depend on carbon tax revenues, it is hard not to see these moves as a double disregard for climate mitigation, regardless of how the Government tries to spin them. All in all, there are many more questions than answers to urgent environmental issues in last Tuesday’s speeches.
