Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 14 November 2018
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action
Third Report of the Citizens' Assembly: Discussion (Resumed)
It looked at different sectors of the economy in granular detail. The ESRI does not look at the agriculture sector per se. However, it concludes that at an aggregate level there is a very limited impact. It has considered a €5 and a €20 increase in carbon tax. While the aggregate impact is minor, the most exposed sectors are the transport and the natural gas supply sector. The sectors that drive Irish exports, including the high-technology multinational sector, would not be affected greatly. As such, the overall competitiveness of the economy is unaffected. To come back to the Deputy's earlier point and something Mr. Watt was discussing, the ESRI looks at the impact on not only the productive sectors of the economy but on households in the ten different deciles from poorest to second poorest and on to the richest. It concludes that a carbon tax would be regressive and recommends flanking policies, as Mr. Moran says, to address those distributional issues. That is just the first stage in the research we have commissioned from the ESRI. We will work with the institute as it looks at how things evolve over time. In other words, it will not just look at a static impact, but at what the behavioural impacts will be if one has a carbon tax pathway from now to 2030 and how different sectors would be affected. It is probably possible to have a more in-depth look at the agriculture sector within that analysis. This time next year, I will probably be in a better position to quantify certain things for the Deputy.