Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We need to be careful about what this amendment is about. It is about multiplying by four the carbon tax that we have at the moment, from €20 per tonne, which brought in about €450 million in the past year, to €80 per tonne. This is happening without any consideration for the impact it will have on low and middle income households or, indeed, on businesses and on rural dwellers, in particular. What we are doing here if we go ahead with this amendment is that we are simply loading on another layer of tax on top of citizens who are already under serious pressure with mortgages and all the other increases in charges that they have as well. We are doing it without any firm international evidence that can show that this has worked. We are also doing it without having the alternatives available for citizens to make the transition. We want citizens to make the transition to more eco-friendly living in using public transport and electric vehicles. We do not even have the network for charging electric vehicles and there is an affordability issue with them. There is the issue of public transport, which, outside the M50, does not exist in most of the country. The poorest and the lowest income households in this State are those that most need retrofitting. On microgeneration, I have a Bill sitting on Committee Stage that needs to be progressed to allow citizens, small businesses and householders to generate electricity. We are doing it at a time when we have not made a switch in how we generate our power. If we are going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we are talking about the electrification of our heating systems and of large parts of our transport systems and we have not made any changes in how we generate that power, except to continue to do so mainly from fossil fuels. Our party has put forward proposals on that to move to 80% renewables by 2030. For those reasons, we will be opposing this amendment.