Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Watt's comments and this discussion are appropriate because they get to what I was going to ask. I have a wee bit of sympathy for the witnesses because the impression one would get is that they are the decision-makers. Perhaps they are but if the Ministers were before us, they would tell us that the Secretaries General were telling them that they cannot do a particular thing. I want to get to who makes the decisions and how they are informed. Perhaps I am naive and I will be put right on this but I presume the Minister says he or she wants to introduce a carbon tax of €100 a tonne and departmental officials will say this will do "X", "Y" and "Z", these are the options. The Minister is asked what he or she wants to do and then goes along with what the officials want. Is that how it works? For example, the former Minister for Communications, Climate Change and the Environment who resigned said that he had recommended that the national development plan co-ordination group and the technical research and modelling group, TRAM, considered a form of carbon-budgeting as a climate policy management tool to aid in decision-making and that went nowhere. Where did that stop? Was it with the Ministers or with officials?