Getting their Way: How the Irish Government Watered Down the Climate Change Bill despite Supranational and Grassroots Pressure

In early 2013, the Irish government published the draft heads of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill. Its purpose was to outline the statutory basis for the national objective of a transition to a low carbon, climate resilient and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050. Several issues related to the contents of the draft heads of the bill proved to be contentious, resulting in a debate over the extent to which it ought to be amended before it was enacted into law. This paper identifies the two most contentious issues and investigates which organisations involved in the debate over these issues saw their policy positions reflected in the final draft bill. We use data collected through a survey of the organisations involved in the process that was undertaken in late 2013 (prior to the publication of the final revised bill) and apply a policy network approach to analyse the policy beliefs and the cooperation patterns of the organisations involved in the policy making process. Our analysis finds evidence for the existence of an environmental advocacy coalition operating within the network that pushed for changes to the bill, but who did not achieve their aim of seeing their preferences reflected in the law. We find no evidence for the existence of an advocacy coalition that rejected the proposals that were advocated by the environmental coalition. Instead, we find that the preferences of the two government parties remained in the draft of the bill that was enacted into law, and that their positions were supported by several institutionally influential or economically powerful organisations. We conclude our analysis with a discussion of the motivations that led the political parties responsible for the law to resist the amendments proposed by the environmental advocacy coalition and by outlining the arguments that the Irish state employed when it negotiated the technical details of the terms of its EU2030 emissions reduction targets with its EU partners.