Last night, the council finalised the new Local Climate Action Plan for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. This is a really welcome plan which sets out a programme of over 150 realistic actions across a range of themes that our local council can have an impact on.
These themes are Energy & Buildings, Transport, Nature Based Solutions, Flood Resilience, Circular Economy and Community Engagement. Each of these themes has associated actions, tracking measures and timelines. The implementation will be continually monitored and reported on annually by a dedicated climate action team working across all Council Departments.
It’ll be my priority to support the Climate Action Team in implementing the actions in the plan and to also keep the whole council accountable for getting the actions done. There is enough flexibility in the actions that means they will need political support when it comes down to it, which shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Public consultation
The public consultation on the draft plan ran for 6 weeks from September to November 2023, with social media posts, videos, and in-person events in Dundrum and Dún Laoghaire.
According to the public consultation report, there were 192 issues raised through 61 submissions. This is on top of the discussions between the climate team and local people at the various in-person events and stakeholder workshops.
The Green Party councillors in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown made a submission which I contributed to.
Green Party improvements to the plan
I was happy to co-propose 7 different changes with my 5 Green Party colleagues on the council. Our improvements to the plan were approved unanimously by all councillors and supported by the council’s Climate Action Team.
You can read our amendments in full here, but in short they were:
- Reduce waste sent to incineration
- Develop a Composting Strategy for organic waste collected by the council.
- Take a long-term view with our winter-readiness plans, in light of changing climate.
- Develop a plan to reduce “Scope 3 emissions”. These are emissions from suppliers to the council.
- Promote and encourage retrofitting of housing and multi-unit developments while sharing Council knowledge and best practices, with an emphasis on reaching households at risk of fuel poverty.
- Ensure compliance with Solid Fuel Regulations through inspection of and monitoring of solid fuel suppliers.
- Add zebra crossings to the action to increase signalised pedestrian crossings. If only signalised crossings are tracked, we would be losing out on recognising the positive impact that new zebra crossings have for pedestrians across the county.
Have questions about the DLR Climate Action Plan or want to get involved in making it a success? Get in contact, there’s a lot of work to do to make it happen. There is also the Community Climate Action Fund open for applications until 6th March if you have a climate action project of any size that you’d like to do through a community group, club or association.
Further reading:
- Draft version of the plan here (the final amended version will be available in the coming weeks)
- Chief Executive’s report on the public consultation
- The DLR Green Party councillors’ submission to the public consultation on the DLR Climate Action Plan.
- The 7 amendments made by the DLR Green Party councillors.
