Dr. Kelly de Bruin:

First, there is no carbon tax on agriculture at the moment so we looked at a carbon tax increase that does not involve agriculture. I agree with Deputy Corcoran Kennedy that a carbon tax on agriculture would have different affects. We have not looked at that because that is not what is there at present. What we mean by a more stringent carbon tax is that, as we try to illustrate, carbon taxes have very little influence on prices because they are very low. When we think about it, the amount involved is €20 per tonne of carbon. There is a great deal of carbon in one tonne. To incentivise people to use less carbon, the amount needs to be higher because it is currently too small to change behaviour significantly. By more stringent carbon taxes, we mean increasing carbon tax so that it gets much higher over time.