The domestic arena has never been so important for the politics of climate change. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change established a global framework that emphasises ‘nationally determined’ responses to climate change. This places national policies – and the political and institutional factors that help or hinder those responses – front and centre. In the comparative study of climate politics, Ireland is not just another understudied case. It is in many respects an interesting case, both for its peculiarities and for what it shares with other countries: its sets of opportunities and challenges; its successes and failures; and the circumstances in which policy-makers have operated. This symposium addresses some rapidly developing areas in the study of comparative climate politics. In doing so, it contributes to developing knowledge of the features that make the Irish case interesting; that make it similar to and potentially representative of other classes of cases; and that make it different from other cases and in some respects unique. Overall, the symposium highlights significant constraints on effective policy responses to climate change in Ireland.