An intense spotlight remains on the carbon tax which is not surprising given the recent escalation in fuel prices. Questions are also being raised on how the carbon tax is being used and in particular, what is the benefit to agriculture.

In the current Programme for Government, the Government committed to ringfence all revenues raised from the increase in carbon tax rates until 2030 for so-called green initiatives. This was estimated to be in the region of €9.5bn with €1.5bn of this figure ringfenced to “encourage and incentivise farmers to farm in a greener and more sustainable way”.

The funding to date has been allocated primarily to financing the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES). In reply to an Oireachtas question from TD Cathy Bennett in March, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon stated that €510m of carbon tax funding has been allocated to agriculture in the period 2023-2026.

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Within this, €498m has been used for the ACRES scheme, broken down to €78m in 2023, €110m in 2024, €140m in 2025 and €170m in 2026. The other €12m in funding has been split evenly with €3m per annum used to fund “green agricultural pilots”.

The first of these pilots is the AgNav Sustainability Platform developed in collaboration with Teagasc, Bord Bia and the ICBF. The second is the Global Methane Hub (Enteric Fermentation R & D Accelerator) and the last is NASCO Flux Towers, an initiative managed by Teagasc involving the installation of 28 Eddy Covariance flux towers that measure CO2 exchange, quantify soil carbon sequestration and refine national greenhouse gas inventories.