Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Yes, that is my first question. Will the Minister introduce a site value tax as recommended by the ESRI to stop the sprawl? Most economists come out with the need for a carbon tax. I have been in favour of a carbon tax but it will not give us the massive scale of change we need to meet the issue of climate change. We need to go beyond that with radical reinvestment or by changing our investment spending. We are out advertising how green we are and what a great Origin Green country we are. We are putting millions into advertising it yet we do not have an organic scheme in agriculture at the moment. We have hardly anyone working in the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which does not even have a head. I could go through every single budget line that shows the complete disregard that is historic in the Department. It never believed in renewables. It fought against them at every stage. It needs to change. Where in this budget will be the strategic shift from the unsustainable low carbon model to a carbon model? A female member of this committee gave me a book - I know the Minister is interested in books - called "Utopia for Realists", which I thought was very interesting. It put forward the concept of a basic income which I agree with and have been calling for for years. We need to rethink spending rather than just obsessing about how big the fiscal space is one way or the other. Let us look at our massive social welfare budget of €21 billion or €22 billion and ask if we could spend it in a different way that liberates our people and is not just obsessed with labour activation, as most people coming in here are. It is all about the paid economy and people who work. Those who work in caring work at home do not matter which is the result of all the strategic investment, tax and other decisions we made in the past 15 years. As we start to get a bit of freedom and a bit of movement, I am interested in looking at different options. Those who work outside the economy and who have nothing to do with the paid economy deserve our support. The sort of country I want is one where people have freedom of choice. It is great to have full employment and to have everyone working but if we continue on with the obsession with the economy and getting everyone working, we will be right back to 2004. I would love to see a budget that actually brings something different.