Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ryan covered a lot. Professor FitzGerald's role is to advise on policy, not to sell the policy, but if we reverse the roles for the purposes of conversation or argument, how can he sell what he has given us this morning, particularly regarding CO2? If we use Mrs. Murphy in Mayo as an example, Professor FitzGerald started off brilliantly. If she is tuned in, she will save so much money into the future. He then swiftly moved along to the fact that the Government is going to introduce a carbon tax immediately, which Mrs. Murphy will most likely end up paying if she is burning fossil fuels, before she gets a chance to retrofit her house. She is then told that it will cost her between €30,000 and €50,000 to do so. If she was a dragon in "Dragons' Den", she would be out at this stage. How do we sell this? The cart is before the horse to a certain extent and the circle is not squared. It needs to be squared. Irrespective of what decisions are made by this committee or any other committees or Departments, at the end of the day, we must bring the people with us. How do we sell that to the people and square the circle? How do we reach a scenario where Mrs. Murphy is still prepared to invest in such a project even though it will be a long time before she gets her money back - possibly not in her lifetime? If she is selfish, as we can all be sometimes, and says that she only needs this climate or world for a maximum of 20 or 30 years and will let somebody else worry about it, how do we change this because that attitude is out there?

The main focus of the presentation is on increasing carbon tax. It almost comes across as if this will solve everything. As was highlighted here last week and using diesel as an example, regardless of the rise in carbon tax, it only takes a very small fluctuation in the ratio between the dollar and the euro or a minor reduction in the price of a barrel of oil or both for carbon tax to be neutral when it comes to the net cost to the user. Consequently, the incentive will be gone in certain scenarios. How do we legislate for that? More money will be coming into the Exchequer but there will be no incentive for the end user to change their habits. We have seen the price of diesel fluctuating at the pumps and going down to as low as €0.90 a year to 18 months ago. It is now up to €1.30 but in the example I have given, there is nothing to say that were we to apply the carbon tax to bring up the price to €1.35, it would not fall back down to €0.95 again. How does that work? How does that incentivise anybody? The witnesses will say that it could go the other way. I am basically asking them how we can sell this. I know that selling it is our job but I would like to hear their opinion in this regard.

If it sounds like I am defending agriculture, it is because I am. After two meetings, we seem to be going down a road that is very focused on agriculture. Rather than almost being critical, we could look at and learn a lot from where agriculture has been and where it has come. It is a fact that from 1990 to 2016, CO2 emissions in agriculture reduced by 3.5% while production increased by 40% in the same period. This was not done through taxation but through incentives such as grants for farm buildings and the REP scheme. We must look at incentives far more stringently than taxation. This has been proven. Agriculture is drifting at present because production has increased again, the caps have lifted or quotas have been done away with but during the period from 1990 to 2016, transport emissions increased by something like 139% while those from energy production increased by 116%. If we are talking about changing land use to sequester carbon that is being abused in other sectors, it is really taking the whip out to hammer agriculture. We still will need to eat and we still will need to increase food production by 50% before 2050 based on the rise in population.

We are also running the risk. This is our remit, as I stated last week. We have to think of the Irish situation here. If we sow trees on all our land, stop producing milk - we produce the lowest CO2 emissions per kilogramme of milk in Europe - and get our house in order, the milk will have to be produced far less efficiently somewhere else and that methane cloud will not remain over the country where it is emitted. This is a global issue and we must be cognisant of the overall picture.