Mr. Eugene Drennan:

In the first place I would like to know the bog the Deputy got the turf from. It is a fine solid black. It took no rain. It has no brown in it whatsoever. It has a high heat content and I would think it is very efficient. He might give us the name of the bog somewhere along the line.

Deputy Healy-Rae touched on a few subjects. Our perspective on the effort to be carbon-neutral, if not carbon-zero, is that this is what we have to work with at the moment. It is the supply line. If we are overtaxed, that is double and triple taxation on the populace. The Deputy touched on forestry. One important thing is that as well as the modern high-value exports in areas like pharmaceuticals, life sciences and medical products, we also have the cheap and cheerful. We cannot forget it. I refer, for example, to the supply of big concrete beams or forestry materials into the UK. That market is now shot. We must try our best to keep that competitive edge.

Another challenge is from the Windsor Framework. If there are green lanes, we do not know where they are going to take us. As I said at the start, with the Windsor Framework we must separate the political from the commercial. There are two differences. It is great to have it, and I congratulate everybody who was involved in it. However, on the commercial side, if we are to have fairness and equivalence in Ireland to match the EU criteria, as Deputy Durkan said, we need balance and equivalence. It is not there if there is one pear-shaped side of the country. It will put us out of sync for our exports because we cannot get backloads. It is all over the place.

Another point in Deputy Healy-Rae's statement was that we should take a step-by-step approach and deal with what we have now. That is as we have outlined. I will not go back into it again. Let us take the next step in five or six years, when we are at the next deadline, and see where we will be then. For now, we need surety of costs and surety of supply. We need to be as green as we can, but we cannot be getting taxed out of existence before these events happen. None of our taxation, including all we have paid in carbon tax, has come back to incentivise our industry. Where has all the money gone that was collected under the 2 cent NORA levy? Millions were collected over the years and millions will be collected from this one.

The National Oil Reserves Agency, NORA, is a very wealthy body and it has had a huge turnover over the years. Where is the money? Where has it gone? We do not have but we have been charged through the nose because of the outburn of diesel and it is back in so that is alright.