Editorial: Soaring cost of A5 - without any construction work so far - shows ​Northern Ireland can’t afford current climate act

The soaring costs of a road that is yet to be built because of Sinn Fein and Alliance’s dogmatic approach to net zero laws is another reminder that the executive needs to wake up to reality.​

The A5 is a project which would undoubtedly improve road safety in the West, and also a project which has been a priority for Sinn Fein for years.

Yet when it came to the crunch, republicans were willing to delay it even further – rather than go back to the drawing board on the foolish 2022 climate act.

The law was passed in a virtue signalling frenzy, with parties of the centre and left desperate to out-green each other. For them, it felt good – and even if the naysayers were right, it was all something to deal with years down the line.

However, the whole issue has blown up long before anyone might have imagined – with the A5 transport corridor stalled by a court because it didn’t meet the strict rules laid down by MLAs just three years prior.

Northern Ireland is far too small to have its own bespoke plan to save the climate. It is utterly absurd to think that such a small country, and one so heavily reliant on agriculture and rural industry, could charge on towards net zero itself.

Our politicians were warned, and given an option to feed into wider UK targets. Instead, seeing themselves as actors in a pivotal moment in human history, they ploughed on.

The 2030 targets won’t be met and will have to be revised. Alliance and Sinn Fein need to accept they made a mistake and sit down with their unionist partners in the Executive and hammer out a deal which allows NI to make a contribution, without wrecking progress.

The public has shelled out £36.8m in the last financial year on the A5, none of it on construction and a lot on court cases. The reality of the climate change act is starting to hit us all in the pocket.