Short thread on “Attorney General’s advice” & Climate Bills

Last time @greenparty_ie was in Govt they had same AG as now. When the GP/FF Climate Bill 2010 emerged it stated expressly that targets & plans were non-justiciable (pic1). @linehan_conor’s comment (pic2) is apt. 1/6 https://twitter.com/dkennytcd/status/1319383087810228224

The Green Party offered a weak justification for this unusual attempt to oust the courts’ jurisdiction at the time (below). Advice from the AG was not cited then; rather, speculation was that the ouster provision was a political compromise. 2/6

The GP/FF Climate Bill 2010 fell with the fall of that govt. When the next govt’s (FG/Labour) proposal emerged - what became the Climate Act 2015 - there were no targets at all, and this seems to have been based on advice from the (different) AG, as Conor Linehan highlights. 3/6

Now the Climate Bill 2020 has emerged under GP/FF/FG with a 2050 target but again no interim targets.

When John Sweeney & I emphasised the lack of legal accountability in the Bill this week, Richard Bruton asked whether should adopt something like this from the NZ Act. 4/6

I do not think such a provision would work in the Irish context, not least because climate litigation may be based on infringement of constitutional and/or ECHR rights.

More generally though, why do successive govts seem so keen to minimise or avoid legal accountability? 5/6

The Scottish Climate Act is a strong legal framework with a 2045 net zero goal enshrined in law, interim targets for 2020, 2030 & 2040, and binding legal duties.

Scotland reduced its emissions by 51% between 1990 and 2020. We increased ours by 10% over the same period. 6/6 End