LAST UPDATE | 29 Jun

THERE IS STRONG criticism from both opposition and environmental groups as the government seeks to push forward with two pieces of legislation this week that will dent Ireland’s position in reducing carbon emissions.

The Strategic Gas Reserve Bill, which allows for a fast-tracked liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage unit in the Shannon Estuary, is pencilled in for a two-hour debate tomorrow, with a similar time period also allotted for the transport minister’s bill to remove Dublin Airport’s passenger cap.

Labour’s Ciarán Ahern TD, who sits on the Oireachtas Climate Committee, says that the two hours being given to each debate are to complete each stage of the bill and are essentially to “rush it through”.

“They’re both going to be completed tomorrow, then presumably they’re going to the Seanad at some point during that process as well, and then come back to the Dáil for a vote. The idea is to have it all done before the Dáil finishes for the summer recess in three weeks,” he said.

Both bills have drawn the ire of environmentalists, with the passenger cap bill empowering Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien to make an order to revoke or amend the 32 million passenger cap that is currently in place for Dublin Airport, and to prevent future caps.

The LNG bill has provoked an even lengthier public debate and among its effects it allows the planning application for the proposed floating LNG unit in Clare to go directly to the Climate Minister, also Darragh O’Brien, rather than to An Coimisiún Pleanála.

Both pieces of legislation were first tabled in the Dáil in the past two weeks but members of the opposition and Friends of the Earth are urging the government not to use the ‘guillotine’ to truncate debate on the bills.

The guillotine is a legislative tool which allows for a debate on a piece of legislation to be stopped after an agreed period of time, regardless of what stage the debate is at.

In a statement over the weekend, Friends of the Earth Ireland said that the government was “attempting to undermine democracy by ramming two major pieces of legislation” and that this was being done as Ireland claims to be championing climate action as part of the EU presidency beginning this week.

“Both pieces of legislation could significantly increase Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions, while making it harder and more expensive to achieve legally binding national climate targets. These are not routine pieces of legislation,” said Friends of the Earth CEO Deirdre Duffy.

Speaking to The Journal, Ahern described the bills as being “two of the most destructive bills possible from a climate perspective”.

“They’re systematically dismantling all the guardrails that the previous government had put around our climate obligations in this country. Both of these bills to disapply section 15 of the Climate Act, which is the only bit of that act with teeth, which actually requires public bodies to essentially comply with our climate obligations.” he said.

The Green Party has been consistently critical of both bills but it has also now criticised the guillotining this week, labelling it as  ’anti-climate’ and ‘undemocratic’

“This government hasn’t been able to find the time to publish the Climate Action Plan for 2026, yet now it is rushing through two key pieces of  legislation that will override the Climate Act. Undermining climate action is the only thing that it does at pace,” Roderic O’Gorman TD said today. 

While the final LNG bill has not been debated, there has been pre-legislative scrutiny by the Oireachtas Climate Committee of what the was being proposed by the government.

The government has said that a lack of domestic gas storage has been identified as a potential risk for energy security and that the planned LNG terminal will only be used in emergency circumstances.

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It has argued that the pre-legislative scrutiny of the bill tool place in February and that it involved six public hearings that involved environmental groups.  

Among the recommendations it took on board in drafting the bill were that, although the decisions on proceeding with the LNG project rests with the minister, environmental assessments must be carried out.  

A spokesperson for the minister also said that the gas reserve put in place by the LNG storage terminal would be used “if Ireland was to experience an interruption to our gas supplies via the subsea interconnectors”. 

This echoed comments from Taoiseach Michéal Martin earlier this year, who said: 

“Using gas as a transition fuel does not undermine our climates goals. It is the only realistic route open to us as we seek to also protect people’s livelihoods.”