Ireland’s Pivot back toward Liquefied Natural Gas

Ireland’s policy relationship with liquefied natural gas (LNG) is once again at the centre of the country’s political and economic debate on how best to achieve energy security and energy independence.

This follows the decision of the Irish Cabinet in March to grant approval to Ireland’s first floating storage regasification and LNG facility with an investment value of €300m. The terminal will act as a state-led emergency gas reserve. The importance of this development cannot be overestimated. One analysis, undertaken in the context of concerns raised in the Security of Supply Review regarding Ireland’s dependency on pipeline imports of natural gas from Great Britain, has highlighted that Ireland is one of the most energy import-dependent countries in the EU, with 71% of all natural gas supplies being imported via two gas interconnector pipelines from Great Britain.

The broader political reaction to the Government approval has been decidedly mixed, with the main left-of-centre parties defiant in their opposition, while the main governing parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, along with a sizeable cohort of independent non-aligned members of parliament, being fully supportive. For many within this majority, the issue is seen not only through the lens of climate goals but also through the hard realities of geopolitical volatility and infrastructural vulnerability.

The decision represents a major break with the policy adopted by the previous administration which included Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but crucially, also included the Green Party. That government had explicitly ruled out support for LNG infrastructure, and their opposition was enshrined in multiple formal policy documents.

The Irish Green Party was, however, almost totally wiped out following the 2024 election, which saw their parliamentary party numbers drop from 12 seats to 1, with only its leader, Roderic O’Gorman, being elected following a prolonged count. Their dramatic collapse was interpreted by many analysts as a popular rejection of a range of policies seen as ideologically rigid and economically disconnected.

In contrast, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael returned with a healthy combined total of 86 seats, just short of an overall majority. There is a clear sense that this has emboldened the two parties to jettison policies previously favoured by the Greens—particularly those seen as obstructing pragmatic energy resilience measures. That includes LNG, long regarded by industry and energy planners as a necessary transitional safeguard in an era of supply disruption and growing demand.

The reaction of environmental campaigning groups such as Friends of the Earth has been swift and predictably condemnatory; a position that is consistent with their long-held opposition to the expansion of LNG infrastructure and export approvals due to what they perceive as unacceptable environmental and climate impacts. These groups argue that any LNG investment risks locking Ireland into decades of fossil fuel dependency, even if only intended as a temporary measure.

Ireland’s earlier governments had, however, expressed strong support for LNG as an element of the country’s attempts to diversify energy supplies. This followed the recognition that domestic natural gas fields such as those located in Kinsale were beginning to decline and would eventually be exhausted.

Over two decades ago, the Shannon LNG project, proposed by Shannon LNG Ltd, submitted plans to build a €650 million LNG import terminal on the Shannon Estuary in County Kerry. Initial planning began in the mid-2000s amid widespread support for the project as a strategic infrastructure development to enhance energy security. The project was subsequently designated a “strategic infrastructure development” by Ireland’s planning authority, An Bord Pleanála, allowing it to bypass local planning processes and go directly to the national planning board. It was seen at the time as a critical hedge against future energy shocks.

Within the Irish debates on this issue, there have also been periodic suggestions that the state could utilise spare LNG storage capacity in the UK for storing gas for Ireland’s own use. Proponents of this approach claimed that such a strategy could provide future-proofed emergency gas storage and serve as a backup in the event of direct access issues with emergency LNG, all while allowing more time to transition to a renewable energy system. This idea was seen as a political compromise for those who remained ideologically committed to avoiding new fossil infrastructure on Irish soil.

However, such arguments were to lose political traction. From 2008 onwards, a concerted campaign focusing on the environmental impact of importing LNG—especially fracked gas—began to cohere. This campaign was particularly effective in associating fracked gas with ecological damage, groundwater pollution, and public health risks. The outcome was a growing level of political caution around how to proceed with LNG infrastructure.

These concerns became somewhat moot by 2011 due to the deep economic scarring caused by the global financial crisis. The Shannon LNG project was effectively shelved, though it remained on the EU’s Projects of Common Interest (PCI) list, indicating that Brussels continued to view it as a strategic asset. Domestically, this meant Ireland continued its near-total reliance on gas imports via the UK interconnectors—a dependency that energy analysts repeatedly warned left the country exposed.

By 2016, the proposal to develop LNG infrastructure was actively under siege from domestic and international climate campaigners. Their opposition was catalysed by global momentum following the Paris Agreement of 2015, which placed significant focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fracked gas and LNG came under particular scrutiny as high-emission fossil energy sources.

The campaign against fracked gas was extraordinarily effective in the Irish context. Environmental NGOs successfully pressured the government and local communities to treat LNG proposals as tantamount to climate denial. The narrative around energy security was subordinated to climate purity, and political parties were pushed toward hardline stances.

These developments led to major policy shifts, and for the duration of the Green/Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael Government (2020–2024), the political will to pursue LNG infrastructure evaporated. The coalition’s numerical reliance on the Greens ensured that any movement on LNG would be politically toxic. In fact, Ireland’s Programme for Government published in 2020 explicitly set out that the Government would not support the importation of fracked gas from other countries as Ireland moved toward carbon neutrality.

This stance was reinforced in the Policy Statement on the Importation of Fracked Gas, published by Ireland’s Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications in May 2021. It locked in the prohibition and was celebrated by environmental groups as a major win.

However, sustained industry lobbying, compounded by escalating international energy insecurity following events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, led the Government to quietly commission a Review of the Security of Energy Supply of Ireland’s Electricity and Natural Gas Systems. In a deeply ironic twist, the review was led by the Green Minister then heading the Department of the Environment.

The review ultimately proposed two policy options as part of a broader mitigation strategy for safeguarding Ireland’s energy security:

• Policy Option 1: Enable the private sector to develop and operate new commercial gas infrastructure, including commercial gas storage and/or LNG import facilities.

• Policy Option 2: The State supports the development of strategic gas infrastructure used exclusively as a backstop in times of unmet demand, essentially forming a public emergency reserve.

Ireland has now decided to proceed with an option closely aligned to Policy Option 2. While the current Minister for the Environment, Darragh O’Brien, has framed the decision as a temporary and narrowly defined response to energy insecurity, there is little doubt in political circles that the policy marks a decisive reorientation. There is now open acknowledgment that a system of complete national dependence on gas imports—without any storage or regasification capacity—is untenable.

This, coupled with the effective obliteration of the Green Party—the key ideological champion of anti-LNG orthodoxy—has ensured that the new LNG project, despite vocal opposition, will move forward at pace. There is a growing consensus among centrist and centre-right lawmakers that national energy resilience must take precedence over symbolic climate gestures.

This is not to say that the approval to proceed with LNG infrastructure will go unchallenged. A series of legal actions can be expected from Ireland’s well-funded and disproportionately influential networks of green and environmental NGOs. But with the political centre now less constrained and the public mood more attuned to energy realities, their ability to derail the project may prove significantly diminished.