Ireland's State of the Environment Report 2024

479 Chapter 17: Conclusions enforcement work carried out by local authorities is significant, but in many aspects it is not delivering the necessary environmental outcomes, such as improved water and air quality, reduced noise exposure and improved circularity in the management of our resources. The EPA evaluates local authority performance against the national enforcement priorities, which are focused on achieving environmental outcomes. In 2022, only ten local authorities achieved the required standard of strong or excellent in 70% or more of the 20 national enforcement priorities. This EPA evaluation highlighted the need for local authorities to prioritise enforcement of the roll-out and use of three-bin systems to improve segregation and to undertake more farm inspections and follow-up enforcement to reduce the impact of agricultural activities on water quality. Moreover, local authorities also need to ensure that only approved solid fuels are available for sale in order to safeguard public health from harmful air pollutants. In the local authority context, one critical issue is the continuation of illegal industrial-scale peat extraction. These operations are leading to uncontrolled destruction of the natural environment. To protect Ireland’s peatlands as a vital ecosystem and carbon sink, planning policy must proactively address the issue of unauthorised peat extraction operations. Full implementation of, and compliance with, legislation is a must to protect the environment. Transforming our systems Transformation of our energy, transport, food and industrial sectors is critical to achieving a sustainable future. Ireland, like Europe, faces persistent problems in areas such as biodiversity loss, inefficient resource use, climate change impacts and environmental risks to health and well-being. The European Environment Agency has identified that the most important factor underlying Europe’s persistent environmental and sustainability challenges is that they are inextricably linked to economic activities and lifestyles, in particular the societal systems that provide us with food, energy and mobility (EEA, 2019). As a result, society’s resource use and pollution are tied in complex ways to jobs and earnings across the value chain; to major investments in infrastructure, machinery, skills and knowledge; to behaviours and ways of living; and to public policies and institutions. Since the first State of the Environment Report in 1985 we have seen, in Irish law and policy, a progression from seeking to be less polluting towards become more efficient (in terms of energy use, waste generation and material use). This has delivered substantial transformations; for example, our waste management system in Ireland has been completely transformed in the past 25 years, and smog in our cities is no longer an issue. While important, there is a need to go beyond reducing pollution and incremental efficiency improvements. Efficiencies alone will not get us to where we want to be in protecting the environment. Collectively, we must transform many of our entrenched wasteful systems to shift our society on to a sustainable trajectory, such as moving from transport based largely on private vehicles to sustainable mobility enabled by good planning and accessible public transport, delivering more efficient buildings and replacing fossil fuel-based heating in our homes and businesses. Taking action now makes good economic sense as well as environmental sense. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has estimated that the world economy will see an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices as a consequence of climate impacts (Kotz et al. , 2024). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2°C by sixfold over the near term. Given that internationally we are seeking to limit global warming to 1.5°C, this is a stark warning of the need to rapidly move away from the highly consumptive and fossil fuel-based economies and systems to achieve regenerative systems that deliver beneficial social and ecological outcomes. Many of the activities set out in this report in relation to energy, food and transport are endeavouring to make this shift to more sustainable societal systems. A focus in the draft National Planning Framework on transport-oriented development is an element in this transformation. Progress is not, however, keeping pace with the pressures and is happening too slowly to address the growing locked-in pressures for the next decade. Consequently, the acceleration of transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. This will require immediate and concerted action, engaging diverse policy areas and actors across society in accelerating transformation in the core areas of energy, the circular economy, food systems and the just transition. The revised Industrial Emissions Directive ((EU) 2024/1785 is the main EU instrument to reduce these emissions to air, water and land and to prevent waste generation from large industrial installations and intensive agriculture. The directive provides for transformation plans to be developed by operators that must contain information on how the operator will transform the installation during the 2030-2050 period to contribute to the emergence of a sustainable, clean, circular, resource-efficient and climate-neutral economy.