More than 700,000 carbon credits purchased by the State over recent years as part of Ireland’s initiatives to compensate for greenhouse gases were later determined to be without value and written off.
In a briefing document to the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week, the Department of Climate, Energy and Environment said Ireland had purchased several million of various forms of carbon credits since the country signed up to the Kyoto protocols.
However, the department said the European Union effort sharing decision framework in this area “placed certain restrictions on the types of carbon credits that could be applied by member states”.
“This resulted in Ireland being unable to use 702,000 of its previously purchased carbon credits.”
The briefing document said the State’s carbon fund, which had been established under the Carbon Fund Act 2007 to record carbon credit transactions related to Ireland’s adoption of emission targets under the Kyoto protocols, had been dormant since 2022. It said the fund had no assets other than 702,000 unusable carbon credits with a nil value.
The briefing document said the 702,000 carbon credits had been cancelled in April 2025. As a result, “the nominal assets have now been eliminated, and the carbon fund is effectively dormant,” it said.
The chairman of the PAC, John Brady of Sinn Féin, said on Tuesday the State had spent well over €100 million on carbon credits since 2007 to meet emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol.
“With such a level of investment, it is deeply concerning that changes to regulations meant that the State was not able to use 702,000 carbon credits,” he said.
The department did not say on Tuesday the amount it had cost originally to purchase the cancelled credits.
In a statement, it said the carbon fund had been dormant since 2022 with no assets other than 702,000 unusable credits with a nil value which had since been cancelled. “They were nil value and cancelled as they cannot be used towards compliance under the EU Effort Sharing Regulation, which sets member states’ national emissions reductions targets out to 2030, and are not valid for use under the framework of the Paris Agreement.”
The department briefing document said that between 2008 and 2012 the State obtained just over nine million carbon credits. These included a direct purchase of 5.26 million credits on the international market by the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) at a cost of nearly €90 million.
The department said that between 2013 and 2020, for compliance under the EU’s Effort Sharing Decision framework, Ireland used both carbon credits and what were known as annual emission allocations (AEAs) which could be bought from other EU countries which had surpluses.
“During the period 2019-2021, the NTMA purchased almost 2.95 million certified credits at a cost of €2.1 million. As AEAs may only be obtained directly from other EU member states, the department, following government approval, entered negotiations to purchase AEAs.
“Ireland entered a bilateral agreement with Slovakia to obtain all required AEAs. In early 2023, 4.15 million AEA units were purchased at a cost of €2.9 million for retrospective compliance.”