Sinn Féin’s loyalty to Stormont’s climate change legislation is perplexing self-sabotage.
Liz Kimmins, the party’s infrastructure minister, has announced an appeal against June’s ruling on the A5 dual-carriageway from Aughnacloy to Derry.
The Northern Ireland High Court quashed the scheme, the largest single road-building project in the North’s history, because it did not comply with emission reduction targets in the 2022 Climate Change Act.
These targets can supposedly be met by drawing up carbon offset plans but no serious attempt had been made to do so. Nor does compliance look feasible within the timeframe Stormont has set itself: net zero by 2050, with interim reductions of 48 per cent by 2030 and 77 per cent by 2040.
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The judge in June’s case, Mr Justice McAlinden, said it might be possible to make a plan for the A5 consistent with the Act. In theory, perhaps, but experience in Wales suggests otherwise. The Welsh government scrapped all major road-building in 2023, declaring this was the only way to meet its similar net-zero schedule.
The Scottish government took a more realistic approach last year when it repealed the interim targets in its climate change legislation, while retaining the aim of net zero by 2045. It did this largely to save a dual-carriageway upgrade from Inverness to Perth.
There has been no mention of any of this from Kimmins or her department. All statements on the appeal indicate it will be based on saving lives. The current A5 has a horrendous safety record, averaging one fatality every four months.
[ From the archive: ‘Everyone who has lost a loved one on that road will be happy’Opens in new window ]
This was addressed in June’s ruling, however. Mr Justice McAlinden acknowledged lives will continue to be lost but the A5 can still only be built “in accordance with the law”.
His comments reflected the extent to which the Climate Change Act had tied the court’s hands. The Court of Appeal will hardly see it differently.
Kimmins also referred this week to the A5 as “regionally significant”.
The project is often framed as correcting historic underinvestment in the west of Northern Ireland. If that is being considered as grounds for appeal, it is equally doomed: the Climate Change Act does not care on which side of the Bann carbon dioxide is emitted.
Of course, Stormont’s hands are not tied by its own laws – it can amend, repeal or replace them. Sinn Féin’s refusal to countenance this is bizarre, given how little the party had to do with the 2022 legislation and how important the A5 is to its constituents and supporters.
Delivering the project has been a key party promise since the 2006 St Andrews Agreement. Its safety and travel enhancements would be complemented by the symbolism of all-Ireland infrastructure: the Irish government was to have co-funded it to connect Dublin with Donegal.
Sinn Féin stepped up these promises last year, when it assumed the first minister’s post at a restored Stormont. June’s ruling has undermined the credibility of the party and of devolution itself among republican voters.
The Climate Change Act has eccentric provenance. It began life as a 2021 private member’s bill from Clare Bailey, then leader of the Greens.
Sinn Féin supported it, as did the SDLP, Alliance and the UUP, with reservations.
The DUP opposed it, arguing Bailey’s targets were unachievable.
So Edwin Poots, then the DUP environment minister, produced a rival bill. Both bills progressed together amid haggling over targets and several other issues, until Bailey was satisfied enough to let her bill lapse and the DUP’s pass, with the support of every party except the TUV. Poots described his final legislation as “a compromise”.
The DUP and TUV both oppose the 2040 deadline, required by the 2022 Act but set by a separate vote last December.
Why is Sinn Féin prepared to suffer any political pain to defend a DUP law that even the DUP only begrudgingly supports?
If Sinn Féin proposed repealing interim targets, as in Scotland, the DUP would agree. Alliance now holds the environment portfolio but the DUP and Sinn Féin have the numbers to put any change through the assembly.
Deborah Erskine, the DUP chair of Stormont’s infrastructure committee, responded to June’s ruling by saying the Climate Change Act “will have to be looked at as a matter of priority”.
She noted this week that an appeal will take years. Even sluggish Stormont can amend laws quickly, when it wants.
Although tactical retreat on climate change would be briefly embarrassing, Sinn Féin has managed far greater reversals in the past. It is managing a trickier U-turn even now on transgender medicine.
One possible explanation for the party’s behaviour is that it no longer believes the A5 will be built. The estimated cost has quadrupled since the project was proposed, rendering it increasingly implausible. If that is too embarrassing to admit, an appeal kicks the can down the road.
But this is speculation on my part, over a genuine mystery.
Sinn Féin really needs to explain itself.
