Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 8 October 2026
5. Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the allocation on carbon tax to agriculture from 2020 to 2025 and to date in 2026; and the projected intake until 2030, yearly. [71037/26]
View answerIn 2020 to 2025, inclusive, what were the amounts allocated to the Minister's Department annually? Will he also comment on 2026 and the future projected figures?
I thank Deputy Fitzmaurice. I cannot give him the future projected figures because I do not know where we will be on that. However, my Department received €173 million in carbon tax funding in 2026, €170 million of which is to be used to support the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, which is set out in Ireland’s Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan 2023-2027. ACRES supports over 54,000 farmers who undertake actions that benefit the environment, helping to improve outcomes on biodiversity, climate, air and water quality, and incentivise farmers to farm in a greener and more sustainable way. Some €3 million will be used for green agricultural pilots, in particular anaerobic digestion, which has great opportunities for farmers and for the environment in certain instances. The carbon tax funding will also be used to support the delivery of up to 5.7 TWh of indigenously produced biomethane by 2030, as outlined in the national biomethane strategy.
In recent years, alongside the funding of ACRES, examples of some projects my Department has supported through carbon tax funding include the Global Methane Hub, anaerobic digestion and the AgNav sustainability platform, which is really delivering on farmers' sustainability credentials as well.
I will provide this next information to the Deputy in written form, as it is tabular form in the response here, but €3 million a year was provided for the green agricultural pilots from 2020 through to 2022. In 2023, ACRES received €78 million of carbon tax funding. In 2024, it was €110 million. In 2025, it was €140 million. In 2026, it was €170 million. It will be €170 million again in 2027, plus the €3 million for the green pilots and beyond. The carbon tax allocation for my Department for the remaining years to 2030 will be determined each year as part of the annual Estimates process and that is why I cannot provide a prediction.
I did not hear what the figures for 2020 and 2021 were. Will the Minister give me even a rough figure for 2020 to 2025?
One matter needs to be clarified. Before carbon tax ever came in, we had the rural environment protection scheme, REPS. It paid several hundred more euro, on average, to every farmer who was on it. That was true of other schemes before there was a carbon tax, such as the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, although I know GLAS gave €400 or €500 less. Although not in the Minister's time, the sad reality is that money has been cut in the allocation. We took money away from agriculture and now it is throwing it in from the carbon tax.
I am trying to establish the figure that was provided. The programme for Government made a commitment to every person that agriculture would get €1.5 billion between 2020 and 2030. The figures I have at the moment show that it would need to get a woeful injection for the next four or five years to get to that figure.
To answer the Deputy's first question, he will get the figure in tabular form in the response. Doing a quick tot, it was over €200 million from 2020 to 2025. Obviously, that has increased in more recent years.
The Deputy does not have to tell me how good REPS was. I was a member of REPS I and II and they were phenomenal. At that time, the slice of the European pie that went to the Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, was bigger, too. That is why, in the previous discussion I have just had with Deputy Kenny, I said how important it was that we get the proposed funding allocation increase on the current proposals around the CAP because a reduced CAP would have very real material impacts. I was a member of GLAS as well.
I understand the challenges that exist in this space but the Government has responded in real time. We paused the planned increases on carbon tax this year in light of the significant energy shocks as a result of the war in the Middle East, and we have given that certainty for the winter ahead.
I thank the Minister. It will be interesting to see the figure when we get it. I did not have the answer when I was coming in. While I am not an admirer of the carbon tax, if it is to be persisted with, I want to see that the commitments that were put into the programme for Government being adhered to and farmers at least getting something out of it. The reality is that if you put a silage outfit out on the road today, your carbon tax bill in one day will be €300. That is one day with a full silage outfit with harvesters, loading shovels, and the fleet of trackers and trailers. That is the reality and there is not an alternative for them at the moment, unfortunately.
The lack of the alternative is the challenge for us in the agriculture space. Look at the use of hydrogenated vegetable oil, HVO, on the hauliers' side and beyond and how that does not materialise for us. That is a challenge for us on the agriculture side, a point I continue to make.
From the perspective of supporting our farmers, I will chase every revenue stream I can. I have just come out of my budget negotiations. I argued the point and I fought the corner for our farmers to get the most amount of money there and to follow every funding stream. We will do the same with CAP out in Europe. The CAP will be what it will be and we will continue to have that process on that, but there is also competitiveness funding. We saw in the past where other money was chased in terms of green requirements and it stopped at the time of Brexit when there were proposals for a 20% or 30% cut in the CAP. That did not happen in the end because alternative sources of money were found. There are a lot of ways and flexibilities to access the money that exists. They are details that we continue to work through.
