THE PRESIDENT HAS said that there are corporations that are “deliberately” working against climate action at the same time as the world experiences record-breaking weather extremes.

President Michael D. Higgins delivered a speech this morning at the opening of Bloom, the annual food and gardening festival held in Phoenix Park.

Addressing the crowd on the first day of the festival, the President used much of his speech to draw attention to the perils of the climate crisis and the need for action to address it.

He said that the large attendance numbers at Bloom each year reflect “the interest that people have in being outdoors” and the growing awareness of needing to protectthe natural world and move to a circular economy.

“We are living, as we all know, in an era of profound environmental challenges, one that is defined by shared interacting crises,” he said.

The world’s leading climate scientists have told us with increasing urgency that the planet we share is at a tipping point, and in some places has moved over that point,” he said, describing the “devastating consequences of a warming world”.

“The impacts of climate change in Ireland are impacts with which we are now familiar. They are reflected not only in threat but in actual experience of the consequences of rising sea levels, by the increased frequency and severity of weather events such as high-impact storms, droughts and floods,” he said.

The President said that “too many of us will have experienced the dreadful consequences of Storm Éowyn at the end of January”, adding that he wanted to “take this opportunity to thank again all those who worked to address the severe consequences, including the first-responders for their valiant efforts, and the great support they received from communities”.

“We have to make ourselves aware of the imbalance between those who are carrying the consequences of a warming Earth and those who contributed to where we find ourselves in terms of the climate change which has been provoked.

“The peoples of the world are aware of the crisis but unfortunately there are corporations that are deliberately going in another direction and are likely to be very active in trying to get us to retreat from the commitments at that great moment of humanity, the 2015 [Paris Agreement] commitments.

During a speech at Bloom festival on climate change, President Michael D Higgins says: ‘The peoples of the world are aware of this crisis but there are corporations who are going in the other direction and are very active in trying to get us to retreat from our commitments’ pic.twitter.com/EX9YMqABRC

— Muiris Ó Cearbhaill (@muirisoc) May 29, 2025

2024 was the warmest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation’s latest annual global climate report.

The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere was also higher than ever before. 

New projections published yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency show that Ireland is far off track to meet its 2030 climate targets. 

Additional reporting by Muiris Ó Cearbhaill