Mr. John McGeady:

Political will is measured in the resources allocated to it. That is crucial. To do that, we have to ask how the resources of our society are deployed across the society. There are major changes already under way. They include an ageing population and demographic change. Now we are looking at risks to the huge corporate tax receipts we have had for many years and a possible shift. We need to ensure we have revenue coming in to fund the policy changes and major infrastructural projects we need for sustainable security into the future. We will have to consider that. If we are looking at reduced receipts from corporate tax in the coming years, we need to have a conversation about making up the difference and funding the infrastructure, services and environmental actions we need.

That brings us to the issue Deputy Gogarty mentioned about the fines. I have a concern. Government is wisely putting money aside in the nature restoration fund and Future Ireland Fund but there is a risk. We are putting this money away but will we have to spend it on paying so-called fines in the future? We need to look at what sort of investment we need to make today. We have to be fiscally responsible but we have to do it in such a way as to ensure our infrastructure and services are robust enough. They are essential to our future resilience and are part of what I mentioned earlier about the need for a just transition that is more expansive and is not looked at in terms of one for one - somebody lost a job because of climate policy and that job has to be replaced. That has to happen but it has to be more expansive than that.

That comes back to the issue of how the Scandinavian countries do it. Ultimately, they have a higher tax take but they have services, infrastructure and investment at a different level from ours.

We can move towards that while maintaining, as a policy objective, a low tax economy for our economic model, although there are issues with that. Even maintaining this as a broad policy objective, we still need to ensure we have a tax take that allows us to do the things we need to do as a society, for both infrastructure service and climate and environment.