Dr. Kieran McQuinn:

In terms of a policy response, the best thing I could do at this stage is to point the Deputy towards the discussion and research in which some of our colleagues have been engaged in examining the issue of carbon tax and the most effective measures to offset the impacts of its introduction or increases in it, particularly on those on the lower end of the income distribution. Our colleagues in the tax welfare benefit team have done quite a substantial amount of work in indicating the areas and policy measures which are most efficient in tackling those types of issues for people at the lower end of the scale with respect to identifying what policy measures would be the most impactive in terms of the scale and the number of people who would be impacted upon. If we were to pinpoint policy measures, that type of work would be useful in identifying those measures.