Experts give smaller parties bigger points for climate policies in election analysis

The party was awarded an A grade, while Social Democrats took second place with an A- and the Green Party came third with a B followed by People Before Profit with a C.

The three biggest parties, Fine Gael, Fiannal Fail and Sinn Fein, were joint fifth, all with a failing E grade while Aontú and Independent Ireland came last with a G.

Friends of the Earth tasked the analysis to three experts: Dr Cara Augustenborg, Assistant Professor in Environmental Policy at UCD; Prof Hannah Daly, Professor in Sustainable Energy at University College Cork; and Prof Mary Murphy, Professor of Sociology at Maynooth University.

They marked the parties under five headings, assessing their willingness to take leadership on climate issues and how they would address the decarbonisation of homes, energy, transport and agriculture.

They placed emphasis on both what was in the manifestos and what they judged was left out.

“The parties who received the highest scores in this assessment, especially Labour and Social Democrats, placed climate action as a key policy priority (and) detailed a comprehensive set of policies to deliver faster and fairer decarbonisation,” the experts said.

“It is alarming that the manifestos of the three parties vying to provide the next Taoiseach all failed this independent climate assessment”

– Friends of the Earth chief executive Oisín Coghlan

“A key difference between the political parties who received failing grades compared to political parties with higher grades was that failing parties were far more focused on accelerating development of wind and solar infrastructure than curtailing the burning of fossil fuels.

“In other words, they answered only half of the climate question by not committing to phase out fossil fuels and stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

They said parties with high grades show a greater willingness to “grasp the nettle” on turning people away from fossil fuels and propose transformative actions in thorny topics like aviation, roads and food policy.

Friends of the Earth chief executive Oisín Coghlan said the conclusions of the exercise were very worrying.

“It is alarming that the manifestos of the three parties vying to provide the next Taoiseach all failed this independent climate assessment,” he said.

“They all voted for the climate law and the binding limits on pollution adopted by the last Dáil.

“But their manifestos don’t contain polices to reduce emissions fast enough to meet those 2030 commitments.”