John Whelan: Why Ireland has a green shipping problem

The lack of involvement of Irish ports and the shipping lines that use them puts Irish exporters at a disadvantage to UK and other European exporters

The shipping lines operating from Irish ports have passed the cost of CO2 taxes on to their export and import customers. Picture: David Creedon

Members of the Global Maritime Forum have travelled to Dubai for the launch of their annual progress report on green shipping corridors, at COP28. Green-corridor initiatives have doubled and the number of stakeholders has increased significantly, but Ireland was a no-show.

The number of green-corridor initiatives around the world went from 21 to 44 over the past year,  many of them in Europe, including green shipping corridors from the UK to Belgium, the Netherlands to the UK, the UK to Denmark, and Norway to the UK. Crucially, there was no mention of any green shipping corridor from Ireland.