About the NFCS

The establishment of a National Framework for Climate Services in Ireland followed a low risk, yet high impact “project-first” approach to understand the national relevance and appetite for a coordinated approach to climate services. Rather than begin with a National Framework for Climate Services, and be unsure of its interest or value, this “project-first” approach allowed Met Éireann to identify relevant stakeholders, evaluate engagement and discover potential problems. As projects are time bound, this was a low-risk method of determining appetite for a more permanent national solution to climate information sharing.

In 2019, following the publication of the National Adaptation Plan and recommendations from the Irish Climate Change Advisory Council, there was an unprecedented requirement for accessible climate information for adaptation. At this time the Irish climate services landscape was fragmented and climate information for Ireland was developed in an adhoc, project-to-project basis. Met Éireann saw the need for the development of a common set of climate projections to help Irish society speak the same climate language. This led to a national research call (to build national capability), from Met Éireann and in 2021 the TRANSLATE project was founded. TRANSLATE became the seed that led to the establishment of this permanent national framework for climate services.

National collaboration and co-production of data and services are central to the TRANSLATE ethos. A key challenge of this project was bringing the whole Irish climate science and services community together and subscribe to a collaborative approach. Rather than work in isolation, and leveraging Met Éireann’s position as the National Met Service, an organisation that naturally bridges the science-policy-user interface, Met Éireann brought together the national community under the TRANSLATE banner. Met Éireann ensured that the steering committee was made up of key stakeholders across the science-policy-user landscape not captured within the project team, such as academics, government departments and institutions, state and semi-state sectors, private sectors, and local authorities as well as international experts – all of whom would be required under a national framework. This “all-Ireland” approach was so effective that it has led to the establishment of a permanent National Framework for Climate Services.

Following a comprehensive review of international climate services best practise and a national climate stakeholder engagement workshop (organised by TRANSLATE) in July 2021, it was agreed to seek formal approval from government to establish a more permanent mechanism for the coordination of climate services. In 2022, a paper proposing the establishment of an NFCS, led by Met Éireann in collaboration with the TRANSLATE community, was brought to the national Management Board (heads of national institutions) for approval. Once agreed, a memo was brought to cabinet and ratified. In June 2022, the Government mandated the establishment of a National Framework for Climate Services for Ireland under the leadership of Met Éireann, which was subsequently written into the Ireland’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) actions.

Building on the momentum of TRANSLATE and informed by stakeholder engagement and the needs of the user community in Ireland, a governance structure was proposed and agreed. It consists of three main components, a governance layer, a user layer and a development layer:

• The Governance layer comprises of a Coordination Committee or steering group to oversee the implementation of the NFCS and ensure a “whole of Government” approach. It is constituted by representatives from key Government Departments, key state agencies and local authorities as well as representatives from the Development and Users layers.
• The user layer effectively engages with all users of climate information and representatives of all Irish climate relevant decision makers to determine their needs.
• The Development layer is the main operational pillar of the NFCS and coordinates the development of climate services among national stakeholders.

In June 2023 the steering group members were formally invited by Government to participate in the NFCS and subsequently strategy and terms of reference for the NFCS were agreed and accepted and the National Framework for Climate Services, chaired by Met Éireann was launched.