Red light, green light

The Supreme Court delivered its most consequential judgment ever on climate law in February 2026. Two months later, the Government introduced a bill that disapplied the central obligation of that judgment. Jason Milne goes green

The Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026 was published on 8 April. Most of the commentary is likely to focus on the designation mechanism in section 3, which is the process by which projects and programmes are identified as nationally critical and brought within the new framework.

That is understandable. Designation is the gateway to everything else the bill does.

However, the provision that practitioners should read first is section 7, titled 'Modification of application of section 15 of Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 '.

Section 15 of the 2015 act (as amended in 2021) imposes a duty on every public body to perform its functions, so far as practicable, in a manner consistent with the Climate Action Plan, the National Long-term Climate Action Strategy, the National Adaptation Framework, and Ireland's climate objectives.

For the five years that the amended section 15 has been on the statute book, its practical significance went untested.

Was it a genuine substantive constraint on how public bodies exercise their functions, or a broad policy aspiration dressed up as a legal obligation?

On 4 February 2026, the Supreme Court answered that question in Coolglass Wind Farm Limited v An Coimisiún Pleanála.

Unambiguous decision

The court was unambiguous: section 15 is a substantive, outcome-focused obligation. It is not a just procedural requirement to consider climate consistency and then move on.

Chief Justice O'Donnell confirmed that the duty is enforceable by the courts and that it extends to all public bodies, including those whose functions are not primarily concerned with climate change.

A planning authority deciding a residential application is within scope. So is a utility company exercising statutory consenting functions. So is a body making procurement decisions under statutory powers.

Coolglass gave section 15 real teeth. It made climate consistency a live ground of judicial review across a wide range of decisions. For anyone advising clients on planning, infrastructure, or regulatory matters in Ireland, it shifted the landscape.

That shift lasted exactly two months and 12 days.

Section 7 of the Critical Infrastructure Bill 2026 disapplies section 15 of the 2015 act in its entirety in respect of any relevant public body exercising functions in relation to a designated critical infrastructure project or programme.

Not a modification. Not a qualification requiring decision-makers to balance climate consistency against delivery timelines. A full carve-out.

Pause for thought

The scope is worth pausing on. Section 7 switches off section 15 across three distinct dimensions.

1. In the performance of any relevant function by the public body. 
2. In the discharge of the section 5 duties, which are the obligations of prioritisation, expedition, parallel processing, and inter-agency cooperation that the bill introduces as the core operating model for designated projects. 
3. In compliance with any ministerial direction issued under section 6. 

So, the Government has designed a fast-track consenting-and-delivery framework for nationally important infrastructure and has expressly removed the climate-consistency obligation from the bodies doing the fast-tracking – the very obligation the Supreme Court spent 94 pages giving teeth to in February.

The approach taken in section 7 is deliberate. There were other options.

The bill could have preserved the section 15 obligation while modifying how it applies in a fast-track context – for instance, by treating compliance with an approved sectoral pathway or a project-specific environmental assessment as sufficient to discharge the duty.

It could have required a ministerial certification that the designation decision itself was consistent with climate objectives before the carve-out engaged. It did neither.

Policy rationale

The policy rationale is not difficult to infer. The bill is designed to accelerate delivery of infrastructure across energy, transport, water, and related sectors.

For projects in those sectors, many of which are likely to be green energy or low-carbon infrastructure in any event, the section 15 obligation may be seen as adding procedural exposure without substantive benefit.

But the carve-out is not limited to projects that are self-evidently climate-consistent. It applies to any designated project.

Designation turns on national importance and delivery urgency – not on carbon credentials. A road scheme, a data centre, a water-treatment plant all could qualify. For all of them, once a designation order is made, section 15 drops away.

For clients in the energy, transport, and water sectors, section 7 is a significant lever.

Once a designation order is in place, the climate-consistency constraint that has shaped public-body decision-making since Coolglass does not apply to functions exercised in connection with the project.

That removes meaningful litigation risk on one of the more potent grounds to emerge from Irish planning and environmental law in the past decade.

Boundary question

For public bodies, the position is more complex. Section 7 relieves them of the section 15 obligation within the four corners of a designation.

It does not address how they manage the transition between designated and non-designated functions, or how they respond to situations where a decision has implications both within and outside a designation.

Those boundary questions will require careful advice.

For practitioners advising on judicial-review strategy, the implications are direct. The Coolglass ground (failure to perform functions in a manner consistent with climate objectives) remains available in standard planning and environmental litigation. But for decisions taken in connection with a designated project, section 7 removes it.

The practical effect is that the strength of the ground will depend, in part, on whether a designation order has been made, and whether the challenged decision falls within its scope.

It is worth being direct about what has happened here. The Supreme Court delivered its most consequential judgment on climate law in Irish history in February 2026.

The Government's response, two months later, is a bill that expressly disapplies the central obligation that the judgment enforced – not generally, but for a class of projects where rapid delivery is most politically important.

That is a legitimate legislative choice. Parliament is entitled to modify the legal framework, and there is a credible argument that the bill's designation mechanism provides an alternative form of climate scrutiny at the point of project approval.

Whether it is adequate as a substitute for the ongoing section 15 obligation is a different question, one that, in due course, will likely be tested in the courts.

Jason Milne is a partner and head of environment and planning at William Fry.