Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I oppose the section because I do not believe that drip-feed taxes work in motivating people to change their approach. While I accept the principle of carbon taxes, I am opposed to this particular carbon structure approach being taken by the Government because I do not believe that a drip-feed model will motivate people to avoid paying tax and change their approach. This is an approach I debated with the Minister around the Cabinet table. It is an approach that I presented to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action. I know that both the Minister and the committee did not agree with my approach because politicians love gentle taxes that do not cause a political shock or pushback. They want to introduce tax that brings in additional revenue that can be used in the approach the Minister is talking about. I fundamentally disagree with that. Carbon taxes should be there to encourage people to avoid paying the tax in the first place. If we took an approach where we had significant incremental jumps in carbon tax in 2023, 2027 and 2030, it would give people an opportunity to change in the interim, whether it is to change their car or, if they are upgrading their heating system, to alter that so that it minimises the amount of tax they pay.

Second, I believe that our carbon tax structure should vary with the cost of a barrel of oil because if carbon taxes increase and the price of oil decreases significantly, as we have seen over the past decade, they will not have the motivational impact we all want to see happen. On the contrary, if we increase the carbon taxes as we are planning to do and the price of oil goes through the roof, so to speak, we will grind our economy to a halt. We need to have an approach that is flexible. As the price of oil goes up and down, the carbon tax should go up and down to reflect that and bring about a real change in people's attitude to using fossil fuels in the first place.

Picking up on another point Deputy Mairéad Farrell raised, this particular carbon tax structure is regressive because those living in rural communities will pay far more in carbon tax than those living in urban areas. I have already given the Minister the example in respect of agricultural diesel where farmers do not have an alternative available to them but in addition, people living in our cities who have jobs locally have local transport alternatives available to them that are not available to people in rural areas. By the time we get to 2030 and we have a carbon tax of €100 per tonne, half of the households in Dublin will be paying less than €9.11 per week in transport costs when the Dublin Bus subsidy is taken into account. On the other hand, rural commuters will be paying €39.50 a week, up to four times more than those who have a bus passing the door every few minutes. Those types of taxation structures will not motivate people out of their cars and onto buses in urban areas for €9.11 a week yet, at the other end of the scale, people who are commuting long distances to work in Dublin and so forth who do not have the alternatives available to them will be paying significantly in terms of these carbon taxes.

This particular section, section 26, which deals with home heating oil-----