Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

462 Chapter 16: Environmental Policy Implementation and Performance 3. Improving environmental performance and policy implementation in Ireland From the preceding sections, it is clear that improvements are needed in how environmental policy is implemented in Ireland to address the gaps and shortcomings highlighted in this chapter. In this section, some enablers that can increase the likelihood of successful implementation are discussed. Many of these enablers align with the Institute of Public Administration’s findings based on its review of water governance in Ireland, shown in Topic Box 16.7. Topic Box 16.7  Lessons learnt from water governance Research undertaken by the Institute of Public Administration on water governance in Ireland (O’Riordan et al. , 2022) identifies six important lessons to support better policy implementation and governance: 1. Clearly assign roles and take ownership of responsibilities. 2. Encourage experimentation, a willingness to engage with varying perspectives and responsiveness to local contexts. 3. Make data central: its generation, monitoring, reporting and review. 4. Focus on building capacity and sharing learning. 5. Take a targeted and diverse approach to regulation. 6. Carefully manage stakeholder engagement. The Institute of Public Administration recognises, however, that structures and processes on their own are not sufficient to achieve better outcomes and that the capability and competence of public servants is at the heart of good public administration (Boyle, 2020). Therefore, better structures and processes need to be married with enhanced capacity among the public servants involved to ensure better governance, and to ultimately deliver better policy outcomes. Policy coherence Policy coherence – ensuring that sectoral policies are aligned with environmental goals – is an important prerequisite to effective implementation. Ireland’s Second National Implementation Plan for the Sustainable Development Goals 2022-2024 includes a commitment to mainstream the SDGs across national policies. Recent years have seen a move towards more integrated, whole-of-government approaches for certain plans and strategies that cut across multiple departments, such as the Circular Economy Strategy, Climate Action Plan, Biodiversity Action Plan, National Planning Framework and National Marine Planning Framework. For example, high-level integration is needed between land use planning and transport planning to support the move to more sustainable modes of transport. Environmental assessments (strategic environmental assessment, appropriate assessment, EIA) can help determine where conflicts, or synergies, might be arise between sectoral and environment goals. Achieving policy coherence is challenging, however, requiring effective and inclusive governance and institutional mechanisms to address policy interactions across sectors – including identifying and managing trade-offs – and aligning actions between different levels of government (OECD, 2023b). Many argue that the scale and urgency of the transformational change required to achieve a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable economy by 2050 demands a radically different approach to how public policies are designed and implemented. ‘Systems thinking’ has gained currency as one such paradigm shift (EEA, 2024b), focusing on interconnections and feedback between governance issues within and across systems (including energy, food and mobility systems) as a means of addressing global environmental and climate policy challenges in a more integrated, holistic and coherent way. National policy position In our last State of the Environment Report in 2020, we called on government to develop an integrated national policy position on protecting Ireland’s environment (EPA, 2020). A national policy position would provide a shared, whole-of-government, long-term vision for protecting Ireland’s environment to guide policy development and decision-making at all levels, from national to local. While progress has been made on developing a national policy position, it remains to be completed. Finalisation and publication of a national policy position should be prioritised by government to support policy coherence and greater coordination of environmental protection efforts among the many different departments and implementing agencies in Ireland. Governance and implementation structures Fragmented governance structures and processes inevitably lead to implementation challenges. As highlighted in this report, many different government