EPA - Ireland's Environment, An Integrated Assessment - 2020

Ireland’s Environment – An Integrated Assessment 2020 Chapter Highlights for Environmental Performance, Policy and Implementation Many of Ireland’s agreed environmental targets will not be met in the short term or will be delivered late. Despite progress in some areas, the scale and speed of improvements being made are insufficient to meet long-term EU and national objectives such as those covering water quality, air quality, nature protection, reducing emissions to air and the ambition for a climate- neutral economy and climate neutrality by 2050. To improve implementation, sustained improvements are needed in how the performance of environmental and sectoral plans, policies and strategies are coordinated and tracked, their effectiveness is measured and the outputs of such measurements are fed back into reviews and future updates. The successes in environmental policy implementation to date, for example around industrial emissions and waste management, were hard won. These successes are being offset by increased levels of population growth, unsustainable patterns of production/ consumption and climate change, resulting in a net decline in the state of Ireland’s environment. To reverse these trends, Ireland needs to improve the implementation and enforcement of existing environmental legislation and policy at all scales, from national to local levels. This can be supported through more effective governance structures, greater focus on monitoring and performance evaluation, enhanced oversight and enforcement, and higher levels of investment. Tackling the complex and interlinked challenges facing the environment will require the development of more integrated, coherent and ambitious environmental policy frameworks and a clear national policy position for Ireland’s environment. 416