Climate Action Plan for 2026 to be published in November after 11-month delay

The Government’s long-delayed Climate Action Plan for 2026, due since last January, will be approved by Cabinet in November.

The plan is the Government’s main roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting the country’s national and EU climate obligations.

The Coalition has been late in publishing the plan for the first two years of its term, leading to claims from Opposition parties that it has downgraded climate change as a priority. The 2025 plan was not published until April that year, but that four-month delay has been superseded by the 11-month delay this year.

Given that it is so late in the year, it is expected the 2026 plan will also incorporate the plan for 2027.

It will have 18 priority areas, focused on delivering measures that will have a high impact in reducing emissions between now and 2030.

Ireland aims to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by 51 per cent by 2030, and achieve climate neutrality by 2050 under the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act. Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment Darragh O’Brien has said, in an interview with The Irish Times, that the 2030 target is unlikely to be reached.

The new plan will set out policy measures that the Government believes will contest the perception that it has neglected climate change.

The measures include the upgrading of the electricity grid; making it easier to develop offshore wind projects; a push to increase the number of electric vehicles on Irish roads; and forging ahead on sustainable travel options.

There are also proposals on the decarbonisation of agriculture and industry.

Opposition parties have said the Government has downgraded its climate change policies since 2025, by supporting new data centres, lifting the passenger cap on Dublin Airport, prioritising roads over public transport, and putting a pause on the carbon levy.

While the level of overall emissions in Ireland has fallen in recent years, on current trajectories the Government will fall far short of its 2030 targets.

In the Dáil in September, Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman criticised the delay in publishing the climate action plan for 2026. “The public need to see on an annual basis if the Government is actually passing the measures and implementing the steps that will make those big five-year economywide changes possible,” he said.

“We had a series of climate action plans published annually so the Government could be held to account. That is the fundamental problem with the Government’s failure to publish the climate action plan for this year: it cannot be held to account.”

It comes as figures show there have been small increases in the number of staff in several Government departments with specific climate-related responsibilities.

However, in the Department of Transport, the number fell from 39 in 2025 to 29 in 2026, according to figures supplied to the Green Party on foot of a parliamentary question.

“The reduction of staff in 2026 was due to seconded staff returning to Transport Infrastructure Ireland at the end of their secondments,” the department wrote in its reply.