The Climate Act, and what's changing around it

What Section 15 actually says

Section 15(1) of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, as substituted by the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, reads:

Source: Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act 2015, s.15(1) (as substituted by the 2021 Amendment Act) - full text at irishstatutebook.ie; also quoted in An Taisce's submission on Kildare County Council planning application 2460787 (11 Sept 2024), p.3. "Relevant body" is defined to include public bodies generally, which covers local authorities such as Kildare County Council.

An Taisce relied on this section in its objection to the Herbata (P1) application, arguing the Council was legally bound by it in assessing carbon budget impact - see the P1 case study. In the Council's final referral summary, that objection is recorded simply as "Concern re: emissions, carbon budgets, Climate Act" and did not change the recommendation to grant permission.

The Coolglass Supreme Court ruling narrowed how much weight it carries

In January 2025, the High Court (Humphreys J) quashed An Bord Pleanála's refusal of a wind farm in Coolglass, Co. Laois, reading Section 15 as requiring planning bodies to grant renewable energy projects "almost always" absent strong contrary reasons.

On appeal, the Supreme Court (judgment delivered 4 February 2026) upheld the outcome for that specific wind farm but explicitly rejected the High Court's broad reading. It held that "consistent with" is not the same as "comply with" - it allows "a range of outcomes" with "a degree of tolerance" - and that Section 15(1) "will not often be determinative" in individual planning decisions, because climate objectives are presumed to already be embedded in the wider planning framework (development plans, sectoral policy, etc.) rather than requiring re-litigation case by case.

Sources: Mason Hayes & Curran, "Supreme Court Clarifies Climate Obligations in Planning Decisions" (10 Feb 2026); Beauchamps LLP case note; RTÉ, "Supreme Court upholds order overturning wind farm refusal" (4 Feb 2026).

A near-identical data centre case has already tested this

In June 2026, the High Court dismissed a judicial review brought by two environmental NGOs and three individuals against An Coimisiún Pleanála's grant of permission for a €1.6bn hyperscale data centre near Ennis, Co. Clare - six two-storey buildings on a 60-hectare site with a 120MW gas-powered energy centre, closely comparable in scale and design to Herbata (P1). One of the grounds argued was that the Board had "failed to apply and/or consider its mandatory obligation under section 15" of the Climate Act. Justice Humphreys - the same judge whose Coolglass reasoning the Supreme Court had narrowed months earlier - applied the Supreme Court's framework and dismissed the challenge on every ground in a 64-page judgment. Leave to appeal was refused on 4 June 2026.

Sources: The Irish Times, "High Court green light for €1.6bn Ennis data centre as leave to appeal is refused" (4 June 2026); RTÉ, "Environment groups seek to overturn data centre decision"; Data Centre Dynamics coverage.

For our purposes, the practical read is straightforward: a Section 15 challenge to a data centre of very similar scale to P1 has already been tested in court since Coolglass, and it failed.

Three 2026 bills go further and disapply Section 15 outright

Separately from how courts interpret Section 15, the Oireachtas has been legislating to switch it off entirely for specific categories of project:

Sources: President of Ireland, official signing notice; The Irish Times, "Bill to end Dublin Airport passenger cap passes in Dáil" (1 July 2026); TheJournal.ie, "Government's use of the Dáil guillotine for 'anti-climate' legislation labelled 'undemocratic'" (29 June 2026); The Irish Times opinion piece by Sadhbh O'Neill (7 May 2026), citing a joint An Taisce / Friends of the Earth Ireland briefing; Labour Party, motion notice (16 June 2026).

Both sides, on the record

Labour TD Ciarán Ahern, a member of the Oireachtas Climate Committee, described the Gas Reserve and Airport bills as "systematically dismantling all the guardrails that the previous government had put around our climate obligations," calling Section 15 "the only bit of that act with teeth." Friends of the Earth Ireland CEO Deirdre Duffy said the bills "could significantly increase Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions, while making it harder and more expensive to achieve legally binding national climate targets."

Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has defended the disapplication of Section 15 in the Critical Infrastructure Bill, stating: "Disapplication of section 15 removes an unnecessary layer that is driving a wider increase and risk around judicial reviews. It is abundantly clear that some of these reviews are being taken for ideological reasons, often steeped in a degrowth agenda that seeks to frustrate the delivery of critical infrastructure." The Government's stated rationale for the Gas Reserve Bill is domestic energy security, with officials describing the facility as intended for use only if Ireland's gas supply via subsea interconnectors were interrupted.

Source: TheJournal.ie, 29 June 2026 (Ahern, Duffy quotes); The Irish Times, 7 May 2026 (Chambers quote).

Our view: FDI matters, but proximity isn't part of that trade-off

We think there's a legitimate concern sitting underneath a lot of this national debate, even though it's rarely stated outright: foreign direct investment (FDI) is a genuinely important part of the Irish economy, successive governments have built industrial and tax policy around attracting and keeping it, and multinational technology and pharmaceutical investment is a large part of that base. Ministers weighing whether to make Ireland a harder place to build data centre and energy infrastructure are weighing a real economic consideration, not just a talking point - and we don't assume bad faith in raising it.

But we think that concern is being asked to do work it doesn't need to do. Disapplying Section 15 for a named gas terminal or airport cap, or narrowing how climate law applies in individual planning decisions, changes how much environmental scrutiny a project's emissions and scale get - it says nothing about where a project should be sited. Proximity to housing is governed by ordinary planning and zoning policy, not by Section 15 or the Climate Act. Kildare County Council can support the data centre sector's continued growth in Ireland - and the jobs and investment that come with it - while still deciding that a specific 54.55-hectare site metres from Primrose Garden isn't the right place for one. Protecting FDI doesn't require the Council to reserve this particular land, in this particular location, for this one use; it's a much narrower ask than that framing suggests.

What this means for the Naas campaign

We think the practical conclusion is fairly narrow and specific: an objection to a future P2 planning application that relies mainly on Section 15 of the Climate Act looks, on the current state of the law, unlikely to succeed on its own - the Ennis outcome suggests as much for a very similarly scaled data centre. That's one of the reasons our main ask is a Local Area Plan variation to remove the "P - Data Centre" zoning rather than a future objection built primarily on climate law: a zoning change operates through a different legal mechanism (a statutory plan-variation process, decided by elected councillors) and doesn't depend on how courts are currently reading Section 15.

This is a fast-moving area - two of the three bills above are still progressing through the Oireachtas, and further litigation is likely. We'll update this page if that changes materially.