The nature of the mechanism of the simultaneous generation of donor–acceptor pairs under heavy doping of n -ZrNiSn intermetallic semiconductor with the Ga acceptor impurity is established. Such spatial arrangement in the crystal lattice of ZrNiSn_1– x Ga_ x is found when the rate of movement of the Fermi level εF found from calculations of the density distribution of electron states coincides with that experimentally established from dependences lnρ(1/ T ). It is shown that when the Ga impurity atom (4 s ^24 p ^1) occupies the 4 b sites of Sn atoms (5 s ^25 p ^2), structural defects of both acceptor nature and donor nature in the form of vacancies in the 4 b site are simultaneously generated. The results are discussed in the scope of the Shklovskii–Efros model of a heavily doped and compensated semiconductor.