If at first you don’t succeed: the development of climate change legislation in Ireland

ABSTRACT

Ireland’s national climate law, the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, was enacted in December 2015. It forms part of a broader trend of countries enacting overarching national framework climate change legislation, with the UK Climate Change Act of 2008 considered to be the pioneering legislation. This article seeks to answer two questions. First, to what extent did Irish policy-makers and other stakeholders draw explicitly on the example of the UK Climate Change Act in developing the Irish climate law? Second, to what extent was the development of the climate law in Ireland characterised by convergence towards the UK Climate Change Act, and how can we explain the observed level of convergence? Using a framework drawn from policy diffusion studies, the article argues that the development of Irish climate legislation can be characterised as partial policy diffusion from UK. The broad concept of overarching national climate legislation travelled from the UK, as did certain limited design features. However, domestic politics – in particular vigorous lobbying by business and farming groups – and divergent circumstances constrained the process of policy diffusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate legislation
• environmental policy
• policy diffusion

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Conor Little, Henrike Rau, Emmet Fox, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. An early version of this research was presented at a workshop on ‘Climate Politics in Small European States’ held at Dublin City University on 1–2 June 2016 with support from the Environmental Protection Agency, DCU School of Law and Government, UACES, and IACES. The author is also grateful to those interviewed as part of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Interviewees included three senior civil servants, a former government minister, two former ministerial advisers from different political parties, a member of the Climate Change Advisory Council, one representative of an environmental NGO, and two representatives of business lobby groups.

2. The six Kyoto Protocol gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulphur hexafluoride.