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

The shadow price of carbon on transport fuels is €120 a tonne at the moment. It is not effecting any change so I am slightly sceptical about that part.

I have one final question. Does Professor Barrett agree with the recommendation from the Citizens' Assembly from Alan Matthews with regard to the introduction of a form of taxation on land use emissions, including agriculture? That was presented to the Citizens' Assembly and was voted on in significant numbers. In that case also, would Professor Barrett agree to hypothecation, in the sense that we know that we have to completely redraw the whole CAP payment system? We know from listening to Senator Mulherin earlier that we need to pay farmers in the west of Ireland, particularly in Mayo. We also know from listening to Deputy Deering that we are going to have to pay suckler farmers and indeed other farmers properly for managing our land. We know from our own internal experts that what we have to get right is adaptation and mitigation at the same time. Part of the adaptation is that those farmers are going to play a critical role in flood, carbon, soil and diversity management and in access to land as well as in producing food.

Do we not already know that we will have to do a significant transfer of payments to agriculture, particularly to farmers and foresters? Would our guests not agree to that hypothecation in any such carbon tax that Alan Matthews proposes?