The 2026 edition of Ireland's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Conference took place on Thursday 5th March in Athlone. The conference's theme of EIA & Renewable Energy brought together consenting authorities, developers, statutory environmental bodies, consultants, academics, Government departments and NGO representatives to discuss the essential role this assessment tool plays in enabling effective design and timely consenting of projects.
 

Nearly 140 professionals registered for the event and were able to freely gather and discuss enhancing the use of EIA thanks to funding from Green Tech Skillnet and the Skillnet Offshore Wind Academy, who once again partnered with FothergillTC to deliver this highly successful event.

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Our Founder - Josh Fothergill - once again curated the conference program and Chaired its plenary sessions across the day. The conference plenary speakers across the morning were from EDF, ERM, An Coimisiun Pleanala and the Environmental Protection Agency. The conference then went into a series of breakout workshop sessions with all delegates taking part in sessions on: Links between EIA and assessment under the Habitats Directive, What EIA can learn from project delivery, and Learning from EIA related litigation. The day ended with a plenary panel discussion on how to make future EIA practice both efficient and effective, including legal, developer, consultancy and statutory consultee perspectives.

       

You can access and download all the presentations from the conference below, plus the agenda - and, where available, a summary of feedback from the discussions held on the breakout workshops.