After a bill was passed with all-party support in the lower house of parliament the Republic of Ireland will become the world’s first country to sell off its investments in fossil fuel companies.

Ireland committed to divesting public funds from Fossil Fuel companies after parliament passed the bill forcing the €8.9 billion Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) to withdraw money invested in oil, gas and coal.

Reuters Newsagency reports members of Ireland’s Dail (Parliament) passed the Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill, which requires the fund to divest direct investments in fossil fuel undertakings within five years and not to make future investments in the industry.

Norway’s huge US$1 trillion sovereign wealth fund has only partially divested from fossil fuels, targeting some coal companies, and is still considering its oil and gas holdings.

The fossil fuel divestment movement has grown rapidly and trillions of dollars of investment funds have been divested, including large pension funds and insurers, cities such as New York, churches and universities.

In an amendment, the Irish bill describes “fossil fuel undertakings” as those “whose business is engaged, for the time being, in the exploration for or extraction or refinement of a fossil fuel where such activity accounts for 20 per cent or more of the turnover of that undertaking.”

The bill also said indirect investments should not be made, unless there was unlikely to be more than 15 per cent of an asset invested in a fossil fuel undertaking.

The ISIF is managed by Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency.

As of June last year, the fund’s investments in the global fossil fuel industry were estimated at €318 million across 150 companies.

“This bill will make Ireland the first country to commit to divest (public money) from the fossil fuel industry,” said independent Member of Parliament Thomas Pringle who introduced the bill to parliament in 2016.

“With this bill we are leading the way at state level, but we are lagging seriously behind on our EU and international climate commitments,” he told parliament.

Reuters reports Ireland was ranked the second-worst performing European Union country, in front of Poland, in terms of climate change action in June by environmental campaign group Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe.

The world’s top oil, gas and coal companies face rising pressure from investors to shift to cleaner energy and renewable energy to meet international greenhouse gas emissions cut targets.

Fossil fuel divestment has gained traction over the past few years as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and universities, have sold oil, gas and coal stocks, especially after the 195-nation United Nations sponsored Paris Agreement on climate change set a goal in 2015 of phasing out the use of fossil fuels this century.

The Irish government will give its opinion about that broader divestment in October.

In the United States, New York City announced a goal earlier this year to divest its US$189 billion public pension funds from fossil fuel companies in five years.