Update on Climate Action Plan

The council has already completed more than a third of the stated objectives contained within its Climate Action Plan (2024-29).

Just one year removed from its adoption, an update was provided to elected members at their July monthly meeting by Cavan’s Climate Action Coordinator, Bronagh Keating.

The five key pillars of the plan – Governance and Leadership; Built Environment and Transport; Natural Environment and Green Infrastructure; Communities, Resilience and Transition; and Sustainability and Resource Management - supported through 197 individual actions, all targetted towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% by 2030.

Ms Keating told councillors that the overarching aim to transform the council into a resilient, low-carbon entity, igniting, guiding, and enabling ambitious and equitable climate initiatives across the county. The ambitions set out have already been incorporated into plans and policies with the outlook of having a “unified” approach to implementing actions going forward.

Of the 197 actions, Ms Keating informed elected members that in only the first 12 months of the plan coming into being, 37 per cent were completed or “recurring”, 35% had been fully complete, and 26% were not due to begin until 2025 or later.

Already in 2024 they estimated that Co2 was 46 per cent down, and what will follow are a number of “strategic next steps”.

Ms Keating gave several examples, like the council’s Bridge Rehabilitation Scheme. With 1,110 crossings dotted across the county, the action here was to focus on strengthening specific infrastructure while also addressing flood mitigation.

Bridges

In 2024 the council received €666,000 and used that to carry out works on 13 bridges, with improvements on five more using the council’s own funding.

Aligned to this she provided an update on the proposed Cavan Flood Relief Scheme, still at Stage 1, with officials awaiting on the finalisation of a draft hydrological report.

She explained to the councillors that the local authority is working on projects that respond to climate change, emissions and address energy use. Under housing their response was to invest more in retrofitting and is engaging with the SEAI Pathfinder Programme that pairs the organisation with others keen to improve their energy performance and reach their targets.

The council is working on in-house energy monitoring, and have provided upgrades to more than 30 homes, while reducing energy usage in their courthouse offices by 30%.

Active Travel

With €3.8M in Active Travel funding in 2024 the council invested in green modes of transport; their IT department now rolls out renovated laptops for staff; and the Geopark places “sustainability” at the centre of any directives that come to pass.

There are a number of community initiatives the council are also involved in or are spearheading, such as clean air awareness or school programmes, and the ambition is to roll out several new projects each year of the plan’s lifetime.

Cathaoirleach John Paul Feeley thanked Ms Keating for the presentation, acknowledged the impact it is already having in the locality; as did Fianna Fáil’s Philip Brady and Fine Gael’s TP O’Reilly.

Independent Ireland’s Shane P. O’Reilly denied he was a “climate [crisis] denier”, but expressed the view that a lot of what higher ups were expecting of the public at large was “untenable”.

However, he welcomed the inclusive approach taken by Cavan County Council and the work delivered under the Climate Action Plan.