The Supreme Court of Ireland, the country’s highest court, responded positively on Friday 31 July to an appeal by the NGO Friends of the Irish Environment that the Irish government’s plan to mitigate the country’s carbon emissions is not in line with its legislative remit under the country’s Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act of 2015.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Clarke has indeed concluded that the plan “falls well short of the level of specificity required to provide” to ensure the transparency necessary to comply with the 2015 law.
He therefore proposed that “the Plan be quashed”.
Welcoming this “legal win ”, Clodagh Daly, spokesperson for Climate Case Ireland - the name given to the legal action brought by Friends of the Irish Environment - said that “the real work now lies in the creation of a transformed National Mitigation Plan” that will ensure a rapid and deep reduction in Ireland’s emissions.
Moreover, for David R. Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, “this landmark decision [...] sets a precedent for courts around the world to follow”.
See the Court’s judgment: https://bit.ly/2D98OBl (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)