The Claire Byrne Show
Is the Government doing enough to cut Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuels?
22 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Well, now with rising energy prices and massive volatility on the gas and oil markets, Ireland's environmental pillar has issued a rallying call for the government to do more to cut our reliance on fossil fuels. They say a new survey shows that 56% of Irish people think the government is not doing enough, fast enough, to cut Ireland's reliance on fossil fuels.
I'm joined now by Oisín Coughlan, who's former director of are friends of the Earth and policy advisor to the environmental pillar. Good morning, Oisín. Thank you for being with us. So 56% of people think that the government is being a laggard on climate.
Chapter 2: What is the current state of fossil fuel reliance in Ireland?
Well, yes, they aren't moving fast enough and doing enough to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And we asked this question through Ireland Thinks because today is Earth Day. So we thought it was a good time to ask it. But specifically because, and people might know this,
This government, the Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael government, have really strong language on fossil fuels from last January, before the latest fossil fuel crisis happened, like January 2025, in the programme for government.
When they sat down to write the programme, what they want to do, they said the government is committed to decisive action to radically reduce our reliance on imported, expensive fossil fuels. I couldn't have written better myself. It's very timely. It's very clear on the problems we're now having. But our point is we don't think they've done enough between last January of 2025 and now to do that.
And it seems the public agree. Can you explain why that is? What reasons can you see for the strong policy statement and the lack of action?
Chapter 3: Why do many Irish people believe the government is not acting fast enough on climate change?
Well, I do think they are, I was going to say the victims of, but certainly subject to the same sense of a shift in the political vibes that affected Europe across 2024 when there was a move to the right in the European Parliament.
And people like the EPP, the party that Fine Gael is part of, decided not to be outflanked by the right and therefore to attack, in the case of the EPP, it was attack environmental policy and climate policy. And Fine Gael actually haven't done that here to the same extent at all. And in fact, they were instrumental at the European level at getting the nature restoration work across the line.
But there was a sense, as the Greens got damaged in the elections, that climate action was so last year and that, you know, let's talk about building things and all things that are very necessary and let's not let environmental considerations get in the way. It's all linked back to Donald Trump as well, isn't it? Well, that's true. Because the right was emboldened by his election.
Yeah.
Absolutely. And of course, I mean, you know, by comparison with almost anyone in Europe, but maybe the exception of now Orban, who's gone, Trump is off the scales in terms of drill, baby, drill. And like, let's close down the wind farms while oil prices go up and let's pay the wind farm companies to drill for oil. So that's all a bit, that's all a bit mad. And Europe hasn't gone that direction.
But we are all caught in those cross currents. But I think what the current crisis has shown us is that fossil fuels are the problem. Their supply, their security, because there's
political and wars now around them and their price and the price is hitting home as we saw in recent times but as we all can see in our pockets the price is hitting home and the government particularly after yesterday when they discovered they have even more money than they thought our main point now is you've spent 750 million in a few weeks to subsidise fossil fuel prices and we understand why we might have done it differently but we understand why where's the emergency spending plan where's the plan
to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, to get us off oil boilers and onto heat pumps, to get solar panels in every roof, to help people move to electric vehicles. Who, if they had a choice, would now buy a diesel car or a petrol car? But people need help. They're coming down in price, but they need help. And now is the opportunity. And it was very good to hear.
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Chapter 4: What are the main criticisms of the Irish government's fossil fuel policies?
Simon Harris, Tánaiste Minister for Finance yesterday, as he was introducing the spring economic statement, he actually said in the context of the broader picture that we have to start taking action not just to help people in the here and now on energy prices, but to get off fossil fuels. So he said it, he reiterated the government's position, but we need to see the action.
The climate action plan is four months late. Where's the plan? Where's the emergency? Let's talk about this poll or survey now that you did of a thousand people, wasn't it, who answered these questions? 278, I think. Okay, so a good sample size. So what about the political affiliation of those who were polled in relation to the answers that they gave? Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, to some degree, there's a... It's not surprising, as in anti-government parties more to the left. So Social Democrats, Labour, the Greens are all, you know, in the 80s and 90s saying that the government isn't doing enough. But Sinn Féin, which, you know, sometimes we see sitting on the fence in these questions, 62% of their voters say the government isn't doing enough fast enough.
But there is 29% saying we're doing too much too fast. So in that more cautious, how will this affect me camp. But I think the most interesting results are the government parties. So 51% of Fine Gael voters, so an absolute majority saying the government isn't doing enough. Now there's a big chunk in the middle then of Fine Gael voters who say they're doing as much as they can.
Because they're not, you know, people, if you vote for Fine Gael, you don't want to be anti the party. And in Fianna Fáil, it's almost evenly split. 44% saying aren't doing enough. 46% saying they're doing as much as they can. And then, maybe not surprisingly, it's AIM2 is, there's a slight majority of AIM2 voters saying we're doing too much.
And then an absolute majority of independent Ireland voters saying that we're doing too much. So that's, That doesn't really, isn't very surprising, given what we've seen in recent times. But overall, it's 56% saying we're not doing enough and only 21% saying we're doing too much.
OK, so when we look at, because the impacts of what's been happening in the Middle East have been felt just about everywhere. How do we stack up in the European context in relation to renewable energy use? How are we doing on the league table? So on electricity, we're doing quite well, or we certainly were doing quite well.
Back in 2010, we set a target to get 40% of electricity from renewables by 2020, and we achieved that, but it's kind of stalled since then. Onshore, demand has gone up a lot, partly because of data centres, or largely because of data centres, and the renewables are only just keeping pace with it. And offshore hasn't started yet.
But on the rest of the things we use energy for, so that's transport, so cars and trucks, and home heating, we're not doing anything like as well as the rest of Europe. So overall, we still basically, 80% of our energy is imported fossil fuels. And in the rest of Europe, that's more like 50%. So that's where the real challenge is. As we know, home heating and transport.
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Chapter 5: How has political sentiment in Europe influenced Ireland's fossil fuel policies?
make the changes and wrap around the project support for them. Free solar panels. Free solar panels installed for everybody. Yes, I mean, in Friends of the Earth, we got them to do that for schools. It's still happening, but we got them to promise that. But it's time to do it.
I don't know exactly how you do it fairly, but more or less for the first 100,000 people, if their houses are, you know, we need to give people that independence. A solar panel and a battery gives you a real head start, even if you have Storm AO on. And also one I want to keep mentioning. They're so cheap. now, aren't they?
The only thing is you'd be bringing them over from China, which I'm not sure is environmentally the way we want to be going. Well, I think they're cheap and effective and if it wasn't for China, they wouldn't have come down in price. So I think we're going to have to trade with China for this because we can't certainly rely on the US on some of these issues.
But I also want to mention on the transport side, school buses. One school bus company, that's a coach company, had to pull out of school bus runs last week after Easter because they couldn't longer make it pay. So that's such a no-brainer, as in we have a very limited amount of school buses, whereas even in the US, the free market of the world, they have lots more school buses.
By next September, the government should be saying, saying now and doing it by September, that anyone who wants a school bus to school can get it and also invest in those safe walking routes and safe cycling routes. We see the congestion from school traffic and we see, therefore, the cost of that for people in terms of time and money. Those are the sort of things.
We just need them to actually show they get where we are. And some sort of scrappage scheme for oil boilers. Again, the grants for heat pumps are often going to people who have gas already and who can afford it.
We need to go out to those who are stuck with oil and who can't afford to fill their tanks and help them, some sort of scrappage scheme, to switch to heat pumps in their houses.
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