Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are facing a profound challenge to the globe. In adopting measures, we cannot be looking over our shoulder and asking what the Arabs or Russians are doing. We have to take responsibility. We have to do it in a way that recognises other pressures, which is why it is important the measures we adopt are consciously least cost, which means least cost in terms of their social impact and impact on our communities. We cannot say let us not think about carbon tax because someone might not be paying it. Carbon tax is a tax on final users. It is a tax that will mean that in the way we live, eat, sleep and work we will take into account the price of carbon, regardless of whether it is manufactured in Polish coal mines or Arab oilfields. We will seek to cut our intensity of carbon use and we will use price to do it. That is what the issue is about. It is not a production tax. It is a tax on the final user.

With regard to grants and credits, some of the investment on farms can give a payback and Teagasc's work shows there is payback for very many of them. We are not asking people to do something whereby they are playing for the board, as we used to say in cards, whereby people take a sacrifice on themselves for no return. This is improving the efficiency of their operation, allowing them generate their own power and heat and sell it into the grid when they have surplus. Some of these are very positive economic opportunities for farmers to take on. Of course, they may have to be promoted by tariffs into the grid.