Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have listened to the discussion on the matter again and I reiterate that it is similar to Henry Ford saying the customer can have a car in any colour he or she wants as long as it is black. No matter how one rephrases or restructures the mechanism in the document, it will still say ordinary people will be subject to an increase in carbon tax and that their personal and individual behaviour will be addressed by taxing it, but that the Government refuses to consider the behaviour or recklessness of agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry. I presume that many members read the reports in the newspapers in respect of two matters, the first of which was the IEA telling us that global emissions hit record levels in the second half of last year, rising by 1.7%. As was strikingly outlined to us by the young people, we need to take leaps, not baby steps, yet all we are doing by increasing carbon tax for ordinary people is a baby step, not a leap.

The other report in the paper is probably even more interesting in respect of my argument. Several leading Irish companies have been named and shamed for not reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to CDP, a not-for-profit organisation which measures companies' impact on the environment. It highlighted prominent names, including Paddy Power Betfair, Ryanair, Permanent TSB, Total Produce and Applegreen, for not responding to its mission survey. We are concerned about the individual behaviour of people who are rightly identified in some of the paragraphs as suffering from fuel poverty, although one does not need to qualify for fuel allowance to suffer from fuel poverty, as we have argued time and again. We want to conduct surveys and national reports on the subject, which is correct, but we do not want to deal with the glaringly obvious issue, namely, that industry and agribusiness, on a large scale, have more to answer for than the individual behaviour of my constituents or the Chairperson's constituents, yet they are all we seem to have in our sights.

I was gobsmacked that after the committee had heard all its evidence, a report was dropped in to it to justify carbon tax. I strongly disagree with the report, however, and, as I noted earlier, it was drafted and assembled by economists - not by environmentalists or scientists - to justify wrongly why carbon tax works, even though evidence exists to counter that claim. There have been many global and international reports which show that carbon tax does not reduce emissions by more than 1% or 2%. Carbon tax fails in the reduction of emissions and the reduction it yields is limited compared with the reduction there would be from the other measures we recommend. Members have stated it is not a revenue-raising measure but then they discuss how we can spend it. If it is about changing behaviour, why are we not examining changing the behaviour of those who commit the worst mortal sins in respect of emissions internationally? We will not deal with that because it is too controversial. It would be a leap rather than a step but it is a political leap that members of the committee seem unwilling to take.

I request an adjournment to allow us to read the report. I want to take it seriously but it has just landed in front of me. I have not had time to scrutinise it and would like an adjournment to consider it. I would also like to draw the committee's attention to a measure in the penultimate paragraph, namely, that the Government should conduct a fuel poverty survey of of all cohorts and should show the short, medium and long-term impact of carbon tax on fuel poverty and the options to increase the tax. I tabled a comprehensive amendment that was removed from the body of the text and inserted into the section relating to carbon tax. It puts me, as an opponent of carbon tax on ordinary people, into the position of voting against the entire amendment, including my amendment, which is grossly unfair. That amendment on fuel poverty, which I introduced to the committee, should stand alone, it should be decoupled from carbon tax, and we should be allowed to vote on it separately. I will certainly not be compromised nor be put in the position of voting against my own amendment after weeks of debate.