Mr. John McCarthy:

We asked the ESRI to look at the impact of carbon going to €95 per tonne by 2030. The report was published in March. What we asked it to do and what it has done is look at the impact of that on the economy. The impact is to reduce GDP by between a half and a percentage point. We also wanted to find out what the impact would be on carbon emissions. It is work in progress. It does reduce carbon emissions but the amount would be insufficient to reach the various targets. What we were concerned about is the distributional impact of that because different people will be affected in different ways. We are working with the ESRI using the SWITCH model to try to model the impact on different deciles - different household segments - and we intend to publish that research. As the Secretary General mentioned, the tax lever is the one lever that is available to the Department of Finance. It might have been Deputy Connolly or Deputy Murphy who mentioned that it is much wider than tax and must be a whole-of-Government approach.