Northern Ireland’s Department for Infrastructure is appealing a High Court ruling which quashed its decision to proceed with the first phase of the £1.7 billion road building project.

Mr Justice Gerry McAlinden ruled that the Department had failed to show that its decision was compatible with statutory climate change targets under the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022.

The case is to be heard by the Court of Appeal over three days from today.

Friends of the Earth’s legal team will argue that the Department’s application of the Climate Change Act is inconsistent with rational climate change decision making and if it was allowed to stand would undermine the principles enshrined in that Act.

The NGO says such an approach would, in the future, allow a government department when faced with decision that carries with it significant greenhouse gas emissions, to approve it on the basis that it is important enough that at some stage in the future account will have to be made for it, in its long-term goal to reach to net zero.

Friends of the Earth will say that taking decisions in that way only avoids difficult decisions now, stores up problems for the future, locks in potentially problematic projects, and limits choices later down the line impacting future generations.  

This approach, it contends, is contrary to the type of forward planning envisaged by the Act and would allow individual departments to decide on course of action with significant potential adverse climate change impacts without having to rationalise what might then need to be done, by whom, and at what financial or societal cost, to accommodate or offset those impacts to reach net zero.

James Orr, director of Friends of the Earth NI, said: “It is vital that we support communities, protect farmland and defend the Climate Act.

“We are in a climate emergency and nothing is more important that to make sure the Climate Act delivers transformational change in Northern Ireland.

“As for the A5, for years we have been saying we don’t need new roads: we need to fix the existing road and to invest in better rail and bus services to the west.”