Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have a serious climate crisis here now and we need to deal with it swiftly and effectively.

What we do not need is a regressive tax measure which hits low income earners most. If one takes my constituency of Galway West, for example, there are people living in rural west Connemara who have no, or very limited and expensive, access to public transport, so for those people there will be an increase in their travel costs, and also in their heating and cooking costs. The Economic and Social Research Institute has stated that those in lower income households are going to be hit harder by this tax. We are being asked, in this Finance Bill, to agree to a multiannual increase of this regressive taxation, but at the same time, we cannot get confirmation that there will be a multilannual increase in social welfare payments to offset the regressive nature of this tax.

TheDistributional Analysis of Budget 2021 Tax and Welfare Measureslooks at the regressive nature of the carbon tax and the reduction of VAT to 9% is included in this. I have a query on this. Are we making the assumption that this lowering to 9% of the VAT is going to be passed onto the customer, when realistically, it is my understanding that it was viewed as help for small businesses by absorbing the reduction on the balance sheet rather than passing it on? Perhaps the Minister could clarify that, and also put on the record that social welfare increases will not be locked in as we are being asked to lock in this regressive tax.

I have another question. It relates to the view that I think we need to be taking, in a progressive sense, to deal with the climate crisis. We know that this State is already Europe's data centre capital, with 54 data centres here, and another 31 for which planning permission has been approved. By 2028, data centres and other large users will consume 29% of Ireland's electricity, according to EirGrid, and worldwide, data centres consume about 2% of electricity - a figure that is set to reach 8% by 2030. Few countries, if any, will match Ireland's level of consumption. This surge in the processing industry will increase Ireland's already excessive carbon emissions, and offset any meagre process that might result from the carbon tax, which as I have said already, punishes those in lower income households, and as we have seen, also punishes those in single-parent households. It seems obvious to me that any talk of a carbon tax as a means to transition to a lower carbon economy needs to begin with these data centres.