Dealerships were overpaid up to €3.9 million in Government grants for electric vehicle demonstration models.
The Comptroller and Auditor General report, published today, set out to establish the circumstances of this overpayment.
The Government has been encouraging the uptake of electric vehicles as part of efforts to reduce transport emissions and meet climate targets.
The payments have been administered by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland on behalf of the Department of Transport.
The auditor noted that the volume of grants has increased significantly in recent years.
Between 2012 and 2025, SEAI issued grants totalling €367.3 million.
The report focuses on demonstration vehicles used by dealers for test drives and promotional purposes before being sold into the private vehicle market.
The demonstration grants accounted for 10.8% of total EV grant payments made between 2020 and 2025, the auditor said.
Demonstration models attract lower grants than private purchases.
As of September 2026, the grant for a passenger EV demonstration model was €2,700 compared with €3,500 for a private passenger EV.
The issue of possible overpayment arose in early 2025. It relates to the EU ‘de minimis’ regulation, which limits the amount of State aid a company can receive to €300,000 over the course of three years.
An SEAI investigation found that grants had been paid above the de minimis threshold in a number of cases involving linked dealerships.
The issue was prevalent among groups of linked companies – the ceiling of €300,000 applies to the entire undertaking, not each dealership in a group individually.
However, some dealership groups appear to have received grants as if each company stood alone, allowing the group as a whole to exceed the legal cap.
The total figure for overpayments was estimated by SEAI at €3.9 million.
The SEAI has been trying to recover the funds.
As of June 2026, SEAI had identified 80 individual dealers linked to 15 car dealership groups with cumulative de minimis aid exceeding the applicable threshold.
All dealers, who received overpayments, were contacted by the SEAI and were given 60 days to repay.
As of September this year, some dealer groups had repaid the de minimis overpayment totalling €109,400.
