Professor John FitzGerald:

I attended a seminar this morning organised by the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, with international speakers on climate justice. Our counterparts in Britain were talking about exactly this issue. It is not clear cut. Ultimately, the distributional issues are a matter for the Government or the Oireachtas. For example, we have said on carbon taxation that if we are to make any progress on climate change we must raise the carbon tax but we have also said that there is evidence from 1992 from research by my then-colleague Sue Scott in the ESRI that people on low incomes, on the bottom 30% of distribution, would spend a higher proportion of their budget-----