Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It seems that if we agree with the principle of pricing carbon so that the more carbon one uses, the greater the penalty one will pays, those very large companies that are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions will be penalised more. I am sure that will act as an incentive for them to transition away from the production of carbon. Perhaps I am wrong, I hope I am, but what I think is at the base of this is that Deputy Bríd Smith somehow wants to penalise the companies that are part of the ecosystem that is our agrifood business. Some of these companies are co-operatives while others are public limited companies but they all run on the same basis of profit and loss.

If the cost of production and sales goes up, a couple of things will happen. The companies will force down the price they pay to their primary producers, whether they are co-ops or PLCs, meaning the farmer will certainly take a hit. They will also look at the elasticity within their employment numbers and the livelihoods of the 167,000 workers Deputy Bríd Smith has been trying to assist and protect will be affected, whether this is by restraining the capacity to get pay increases or reductions in their numbers. It might look well, from an ideological point of view, to go after big business and it might constitute a great slogan but the effects will not be on the directors or the shareholders so much as on employees and the people who supply the primary produce to the company.

We should look at this right across society, rather than targeting the agrifood sector. One section addresses agriculture and how we mitigate the effects of measures to deal with emissions in the sector. The approach is broad-based but this suggestion will have no meaningful impact on reducing emissions. Instead it will hurt between 167,000 and 170,000 employees in the sector, including farmers, and will have a negative impact on the overall economy.