Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask the secretariat to circulate the CSO report on fossil fuels and similar subsidies for the convenience of members. Mention was made of Ireland possibly facing fines. We have not faced fines to date and there is no prospect of facing fines at the moment. That is solely because we spend taxpayers' money in advance buying the unused carbon credits of other countries through the emissions trading scheme. We have spent money in order to avoid having to pay the fines. It is the same thing, only we have bought our way out of the fines for some years now. The Comptroller and Auditor General's report has a chapter this year on greenhouse gas and related financial transactions and that will be the basis of our discussion. Towards the end of that chapter, he mainly deals with emissions trading. He does, however, go into the carbon taxes but we are going to home in on that element because the emissions trading purchases are a bit historic at this stage. We discussed this issue previously.

We will focus on the carbon tax in more detail in the next meeting. We are going to ask for information from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the CSO. Specifically, we will ask the Revenue what way it has of identifying the carbon tax. It does not decide spending, but we will want a clear statement as to how the tax is collected and the basis on which it is levied. We will want that information in practical, people-friendly terms, rather than dealing with information in technical detail, such as the tax being €15 a tonne and converting it to litres for home heating oil, or however else it is used. We will ask the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform whether it has any information on how the carbon tax revenues are spent. The funds accrued would have been spent by different Departments on things such as retrofitting in houses, etc. Some of the spending, therefore, might not have been under the rubric of the Department of Communications, Climate Change and Environment. We will put that Department on notice that we will be arranging an early special Tuesday meeting on the use of carbon taxes collected to date. We will try to finalise a date for that next week. Is that agreed? Agreed. I call Deputy Cassells, who has a query about the work programme.