Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My problem with this is that it is a clear breach of the legislation. I appreciate that the Comptroller and Auditor General does not want to go on record and is not a lawyer. I do not need to be a lawyer to know it is a breach of the law. If a punter breaks the law, we throw the book at him or her. When the system breaks the law, we circle the wagons, repurpose and fudge it in language. I appreciate that it is a policy issue. We are all taking this carbon tax thing on the chin in the interests of climate change. We have penalisation without alternatives in many instances with public transport and so on, particularly in rural Ireland. There is another 2 cent or whatever it is per litre on fuel in the budget this week. Here is 2 cent that is being taken that we do not need and we are in breach of our own law in taking it. The Minister says we are going to repurpose it. For what?