Climate factor is yet again absent as a pressing election issue on the doorsteps (2024)

Ireland has emerged from nine months of storms, floods and unrelenting disruption to food production; a pattern many fear is becoming the new norm. Yet the main culprit – climate change – is far down the list of Irish voter concerns.

This is a recurring trend come election time, though there is evidence Irish people have good understanding of the climate crisis and want Government to be more ambitious in responding to it.

Based on an arbitrary review of leaflets pushed through letterboxes, candidates in most instances don’t regard it as a pressing issue. Climate is barely mentioned. The EU nature restoration law (NRL), where highlighted, is usually in a negative sense.

There is more frequent mention of better public transport/active travel – the best way to reduce carbon emissions in urban areas. Nature-based solutions, which would address biodiversity decline and protect against extreme weather, rarely feature. An Irish Times/Ipsos B & Snapshot poll indicated immigration (29 per cent) and housing (19 per cent) top the list, while climate was mentioned by 3 per cent of respondents.

Green councillor Claire Byrne is acutely conscious of the disconnect and so has a doorstep strategy in Dublin’s southeast inner city ward of “reminding people of the threat and the co-benefits of climate action – cleaner air; freer streets and nicer places to live”.

“It would not be the first direct thing that someone would open with ... it does happen but not very often,” she adds.

Byrne believes that since the last election the issue is on people’s minds more, primarily because of extreme weather events.

“They’re not saying climate change is the biggest threat to society ... but are very happy to have the conversation when you direct it in that direction.”

Fine Gael councillor in Laois Thomasina Connell believes climate features less compared to when she first stood for election five years ago but a wide range of actions, especially in the midlands largest town Portlaoise, amount to effective climate action.

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These include scale-up of local bus services with 40 bus stops around the sprawling and congested urban area now designated as “a low-carbon town”. There are new cycleways; biodiversity initiatives, water retention and community actions on sustainability. “Ultimately, it’s all about quality of life, and it has gone up a notch or two in the past few years,” Connell adds.

Manifestos make for contrasting reading. For the Greens, climate action has always been its main policy priority but on this occasion the Social Democrats have an equally detailed document.

The former is strong on active travel/rebalancing road space, nature restoration and scaling up adaptation measures to make the country resilient in a world of likely temperature rise above 1.5 degrees.

People Before Profit is most ambitious in seeking “climate neutrality by 2035″ and leveraging behavioural change, including reduced public transport prices, free travel on hydrogen-powered buses and a Greater Dublin Area cycle network plan.

Labour includes an audit of active transport infrastructure with focus on “walkable towns and city centres” and better ancillary services including bicycle storage facilities at bus shelters and transport hubs.

Since the 2019 elections when Sinn Féin had the weakest policy, it has upped its game somewhat with “a vision for renewable energy” and big emphasis on just transition to net-zero emissions – though it lacks granular detail.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil focus on national policy and what they have achieved in government. Fine Gael’s manifesto reads like a cut a paste of vague commitments, though it includes a novel “bike-to-college” scheme. Fianna Fáil is in a similar vein, while also committing to “a dedicated police force for public transport”.

On the campaign trail, there is little evidence of widespread disinformation and misinformation being circulated at European level, where farmers and the hard right attempt to see off the NRL.

In rural Ireland, however, the NRL is often presented as the bogeyman (combined with demonisation of Eamon Ryan). This is prevalent among independents – a Farmers Journal poll found Independent Ireland was the third most popular party among farmers at 11 per cent. But there is no significant shift in Irish public opinion against climate action, in contrast to other European countries, a Friends of the Earth (FoE) poll found.

At EU level, the toxic politics predicted to emerge during the climate transition is taking root.

Historian Diarmaid Ferriter noted the space is being crowded with other themes, all of which should be dwarfed by the enormity of the consequences of climate change, while “across the EU critics of necessary change are also falling back on lazy, dangerous strategies that involve scapegoating climate change activists and relying on assertions of national ‘freedom’ or ‘independence’.”

That might not be in Ireland but lessons from the immigration debate here indicate there is a risk that it could become how the climate conversation is framed, unless there is an honest conversation on the issue come the general election.

Going down that path in a scenario where climate action is unpopular risks compounding current difficulties for Irish Greens.

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