2024 was a year of progress for Community Law & Mediation, as we continued our mission to provide free, accessible legal, mediation and education services to individuals and communities facing exclusion and inequality.
Our Annual Report 2024 highlights the launch of our new five-year Strategic Plan, the growth of our work in environmental and children’s law, and our ongoing advocacy for systemic change in housing, social welfare, employment and access to justice across the board.
Each figure and initiative within this report reflects the lived experiences of those we support and our collective effort to advance equality and access to justice.
Guided by our mission to empower communities, tackle underlying injustice and exclusion, and advance rights-based changes in public policy and law – This report reflects both the scale and scope of our work to ensure access to justice for all.
Never has it been more vital to boldly champion human rights and equality. General election 2024 must deliver a government of integrity; a government that invests in essential community-led services to address poverty and inequality; that recognises and addresses the inequalities in our society through progressive rights-based solutions; that prioritises bold investment in cross-sectoral initiatives and capital infrastructure projects that reduce Ireland’s reliance on fossil fuels and deliver long term solutions to our shared climate and social justice challenges.
In this our submission ahead of general elction 2024, we make a series of practical recommendations to empower communities, strengthen equality and human rights, and in doing so address the climate and housing crises.
Read our general election priorities in full here:
As COP29 gets underway, the Centre for Environmental Justice is calling for Ireland to lead by example on the global stage by meeting its legally binding climate responsibilities at home.
“Ireland has a proven track record of leading and building consensus during the annual COP negotiations and we welcome the appointment of Eamon Ryan as one of the EU’s lead negotiators on climate finance this year’s conference.
However, we also require leadership through tangible actions on the ground. Ireland’s emissions are not decreasing rapidly enough to stay within the confines of the State’s own legally binding 2025 and 2030 carbon budgets and successive Climate Action Plans have fallen short on implementation. The cost of failing to meet these obligations could exceed €8 billion for the period up to 2030.
As a developed country with a strong capacity to transition towards a climate-neutral economy, Ireland has a responsibility to demonstrate global leadership on climate action. The new Government, when it is appointed, has a legal and ethical duty to ensure the State adheres to its obligations on climate change, to protect children, citizens and communities from the most dangerous impacts of the climate crisis.”
The community law centre is currently involved in two significant legal challenges of Ireland’s record on climate action and it is also supporting NGOs Climate Action Network Europe and Global Legal Action Network in a climate case against the European Commission which stands to be the first in which the European Court of Justice scrutinises the adequacy of the EU’s climate targets.
Ireland’s record on emissions reductions
Despite being among the smallest countries in the European Union, Ireland ranks second highest in emissions per capita. Ireland’s emissions are not decreasing rapidly enough to stay within the confines of the State’s own legally binding 2025 and 2030 carbon budgets. The latest projections of the EPA (May 2024) forecast a significant overshoot of between 17 and 27 per cent of the first two carbon budgets (2021-2030). Any overshoot of the first five-year budget must be carried forward to reduce the following five-year budget.
Successive Climate Action Plans have fallen short of implementation. As per the Government’s progress report on CAP23, 35% of the proposed actions were left unaccomplished. Notwithstanding this shortfall, CAP24 fails to outline strategies for compensating for these implementation gaps or ensuring compliance with the carbon budgets.
The applicants in this case, Community Law & Mediation, a grandfather, a youth climate activist, and a child, seek a declaration from the Court that the Government is not complying with what it has set out in its own law, the Climate and Low Carbon Development Act 2015 (as amended).
We argue that the Climate Action Plan 2024 (CAP24), the instrument by which the Government sets out the roadmap for meeting Ireland’s legally binding carbon budget, fails to meet the legal standards set by the Oireachtas and so undermines the State’s efforts at effective climate action in line with Ireland’s legal obligations.
We believe CAP24 is not in compliance with the first carbon budget or the carbon budget programme and was prepared, submitted and approved in breach of the 2015 Act. In addition, we argue that CAP24 violates the fundamental rights of the three individual applicants, marginalised groups that CLM works with, and future generations, as protected by the Constitution of Ireland 1937, the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights.
CLM is taking this case on behalf of low income and marginalised communities that that we work with, and younger and future generations, all of whom stand to be most impacted by climate change but have least opportunity to protect or vindicate their rights.
This case was granted leave to proceed by the High Court on 9th September 2024, and we currently await a hearing date.
A separate challenge by Friends of the Irish Environment, supported by CLM, of the Climate Action Plan 2023, specifically the failure by the Government to show with a sufficient level of specificity that the Climate Action Plan and its Annex of Actions will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with Ireland’s legally binding carbon budget. The hearing date for this case is 28th January 2025.
CLM is also supporting NGOs Climate Action Network Europe and Global Legal Action Network in a climate case against the European Commission which stands to be the first in which the European Court of Justice scrutinises the adequacy of the EU’s climate targets. The aim of this case, which was announced on 27th August 2024, is to increase the EU’s climate ambition by 2030, by requiring the Commission to revise Member States’ annual emissions allocations under the Effort Sharing Regulation.
Why is climate litigation important?
Climate litigation is a critical tool in enforcing and enhancing the climate obligations of governments, public and private organisations in the face of failure to meet emissions reductions targets and the increasingly visible impacts of climate change.
In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognised the role of litigation in affecting “the outcome and ambition of climate governance”.
The last decade has seen a surge in climate litigation worldwide as a growing number of communities take action to secure their human rights and hold governments, fossil fuel companies and others accountable.
About Community Law & Mediation and our Centre of Environmental Justice
Community Law & Mediation is an independent community law centre and charity, working since 1975 with communities impacted by social exclusion, disadvantage and inequality, through the provision of free legal advice, advocacy, mediation and education services.
In 2021, CLM established the Centre for Environmental Justice which works to ensure that no person or community is disproportionately impacted by climate change or other environmental harms, and that environmental measures and climate action protect and build equality and social justice. CLM also provides a specialist children’s law service to support young people and their families.
Appointments for our free legal advice clinics on environmental and/or children’s rights can be booked by contacting 01 847 7804 or filling in the clinic form here.
Did you know? Community Law & Mediation offers a free community mediation service for neighbours, siblings, communities in dispute.
Community mediation can help to build more positive, peaceful and inclusive communities. It can play a key role in fostering a better sense of understanding, communication, and collaboration among community members. It does this by opening up channels of communication and helping people to work through their difficulties or disputes in a non-adversarial setting.
To understand what community mediation is, we first need to understand mediation itself:
What is Mediation?
Mediation aims to help disputing parties find a mutual agreement. It’s a voluntary, private, and fair process. It avoids the need to take legal action.
It is a process where two parties in a dispute (individuals, family members, community members) mutually agree to meet with professional and impartial mediators to resolve conflicts, disputes, or other contentious issues, without the need to take costly or emotionally draining legal action.
What is the role of the Mediator?
The main role of a mediator is to be impartial, to treat all parties fairly and to manage the mediation process. Their job is to facilitate the two parties to communicate effectively and consider the issues with a view of parties mutually agreeing an outcome.
What is Community Mediation?
Community mediation helps members of a community, neighbours, tenants and landlords to resolve disputes in a non-adversarial setting. Disputes often arise over noise, litter, disputes over boundaries or common areas, between tenants and landlord disputes, siblings, and more.
Community mediation is a means for community members and neighbours to resolve disputes, without the need to take legal action.
It actively works to improve the quality of life for those living in a community, enabling them to live together in harmony.
What issues can community mediation help with?
The types of issues that community mediation can help with include:
Noise complaints
Disputes over boundaries or common areas.
Disputes over pets (such as barking dogs)
Disputes between siblings relating to the care of an elderly parent.
Tenant and landlord disputes.
What are the benefits of community mediation?
Allowing conflicting community members, siblings, or family members to work resolve their dispute in a non-adversarial setting.
It is a voluntary, private, and fair process.
CLM’s mediation services are free and confidential.
To book into our free community mediation service, please contact us on 01-847 7804. Alternatively, email mediationadmin@communitylawandmediation.ie to find out more about mediation and conflict coaching and the process involved.
All of our conflict coaches and mediators have completed conflict management training and received accreditation from the Mediator’s Institute of Ireland.
Part 9 of the Planning and Development Bill 2023 relates to proposed changes to the judicial review process, which ensures that statutory bodies such as An Bord Pleanála make decisions in accordance with the law. The process itself is not easy to engage in, and a judicial review application is only successful if there has been a breach of law or process.
If part 9 of the bill is passed in its current form, it will will make it more difficult and costly for citizens, community and environmental groups and residents’ associations to challenge planning decisions which affect their communities and the environment.
It will introduce a requirement that a list of the names and addresses of those who vote in favour of bringing judicial proceedings is submitted in court documents – this can only be designed to produce a chilling effect and scare local groups off potential challenges. It will also restrict environmental NGOs from taking legal action unless they fulfil arbitrary preconditions, such as being a company with ten or more members.
Community, environmental and residents’ groups play a vital role in helping make their neighbourhood a better place to live, and should be empowered hold the government to account when they make decisions which aren’t in accordance with the law.
Are you concerned about the implications of part 9 of the Planning and Development Bill?
Below, you can find a useful email template in PDF and Word format that we have created for you to edit accordingly, to send on to the TDs in your constituency or the Minister for Housing. You can also download the template as a word document here.
If you have concerns about the bill which are not included in our template, please feel free to add in.
