A laggard in good times and bad? The limited impact of EU membership on Ireland’s climate change and environmental policy

Climate change communication and public engagement in interpersonal deliberative settings: evidence from the Irish citizens’ assembly

“…carbon tax from €20 to €80 per tonne and increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix from 30% to 70%, both before 2030. For a climate laggard that has consistently failed to meet its EU targets (Torney and O'Gorman 2019), this represents an extraordinary move.…”

Bridging the gap – implications of current COVID-19 fiscal rescue and recovery measures

“…Where processes exist that enable individuals to directly shape policy -including citizens' juries and assemblies -they have led to the proposal of measures that have confronted the structural determinants of high-carbon lifestyles (Kythreotis et al 2019;Devaney et al 2020). For example, Ireland's citizens' assembly advocated higher taxes across carbon-intensive activities (Torney and O'Gorman 2019;Muradova et al 2020) whereas in France, participants proposed a change to the country's Constitution and a new law of 'ecocide' as ways to hold policymakers and other actors to account (Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat 2020). The 2015 World Wide Views deliberation across 76 countries likewise found that most citizens supported strong action on climate change (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2019).…”

Ireland’s Policy Response to Climate Change: An Historical Overview

“…However, if we judge the impact of the EU’s impact in terms of delivery on Ireland’s substantive as opposed to procedural obligations, the picture is much more mixed. Indeed, perhaps what is most striking is how limited the impact of EU membership has been on constraining Ireland’s policy substantive response to climate change (Torney and O’Gorman 2019 ).…”

“…More recently, the literature has expanded to include studies of the development of Ireland’s 2015 climate law (Torney 2017 , 2019 ), climate change and party politics (Ladrech and Little 2019 ; Little 2017 ), Ireland’s climate change governance (NESC 2019 ), and the impact of EU membership on Ireland’s climate policy response (Torney and O’Gorman 2019 ). Meanwhile, sectoral studies have drawn attention to the opportunities for, and constraints on, low-carbon transition in energy (Torney 2018 ), agriculture (Curtin and Arnold 2016 ), and transport (Devaney and Torney 2019 ).…”