Professor John FitzGerald:

The Deputy asked six questions. On oil and diesel and what will happen once all the transport is electrified, the State will lose €5 billion in revenue. The Department of Finance has published a paper that is beginning to look at that. It is an issue. It will be a while before the revenue begins to fall off. It will be only when we get the acceptance of electric cars. That will be an issue. In terms of climate proofing the budget, it sounds like a good idea to check what will be the effect of that.

On local authorities and people on low incomes, I believe the State owns more than 100,000 dwellings out of the 2 million local authority dwellings. The State has the duty to upgrade them, not the tenant. Kilkenny County Council did an interesting job on a local authority estate in Kilkenny a number of years ago. Some of the local authority dwellings were privately owned but the council contracted with somebody to put external cladding on and do a job on the dwellings. Those in the privately owned dwellings asked if they could pay and opt into the scheme. I believe this is one of the pilot schemes that would work. There were some problems with the scheme but that is the way to go.

The Deputy spoke about advisers. It is not just people on low incomes. I was talking to three people on very high incomes who do not know where to go for advice. That is an issue, and that is the reason the Department is talking about ramping up and training. The Deputy asked about the staffing available. It is not available. We have a building construction sector that is constrained. The Department knows that. That aspect of the plan needs to be spelled out but it is important that it is being realistic in that we need to do work to develop the supply side.

On the rural versus urban question, a very important paper was produced by Edgar Morgenroth and Richard Tol more than a decade ago. The reason this falls more on rural Ireland than urban Ireland is because of commuters. Barra Roantree had an interesting piece in his paper last week. Farmers pottering around their local area do not clock up much kilometrage but commuters do. The reason we need a carbon tax is to persuade the commuters to be early adopters of electric cars. If they continue to drive a fossil fuel car in 2027, they will be paying a great deal of money for doing that but they will have the option then to drive an electric car to commute to and from work in Galway or Dublin and pay much less for doing so. The rural versus urban issue is related to the commuting, not to the energy use of the household. That is the reason the price needs to be ramped up. It is to persuade commuters to move in this direction.

Also, the national planning framework calls for denser development. In the future, we do not want more people commuting. We will not change the pattern of people who are already commuting but we want denser development to ensure we do not have such numbers of people commuting. One of the issues Deputy Boyd Barrett raised in terms of public transport is that it becomes effective when people live in an urban area. For people travelling into Galway from all over the county, public transport is not an option.

The residual value of cars is certainly an issue. We should remember that cars depreciate by 20% a year. If a person pays €20,000 for a car today, it will be worth €16,000 next year and after three years it will be worth €10,000. By 2030, when we have to move away from driving fossil fuel cars, it will be worth nothing. If a person is buying a car today, he or she needs to be mindful of the residual value of the car and whether that person should buy an electric car. It is that uncertainty which will drive the early adoption of electric vehicles. It will not be because the State will tell people to do it. It will be because people will see the risk of buying a fossil fuel car in 2021, which could be worth nothing in 2027, and may opt to buy an electric one. Those are the factors that will drive change.