Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I apologise for not being here earlier. The Wildlife (Amendment) Bill 2016, which relates to peat extraction, a very relevant issue, was being debated.

I have read all the witnesses' statements with interest. We need to talk about the cost of carbon rather than consider a carbon tax. Carbon has immense costs as manifest in all the impacts of climate change on many of the most vulnerable people in the world. I have met people from Malawi and Bangladesh, and others, who are experiencing the cost of carbon. Its impact on the climate and on vulnerable people has not been reflected in its price. That is because the cost and the damage have been socialised. The price is being paid in terms of people's health and lives, and by governments which deal with flooding, the displacement of numerous people and land that is no longer arable. Those costs have not featured in the discussion on fossil fuels, as if they are solely a commodity to be traded in the market. The price of carbon has to reflect more of the cost. The question for us is: when we have a realistic cost how do we ensure that everyone in society is not affected by that realistic price?

I do not like the narrative that this is a stick to poke people into behavioural change. It is much more serious than that and is a much bigger issue. It is not a matter of a tax being introduced as a slap on the wrist but of a serious price. We need to ensure that all the revenues from that are used to take serious action on climate change. We have very few conversations but when we do a majority seem to favour a sustainable transport infrastructure or household energy improvements.

I am concerned about the dividend argument and would like to hear the perspectives of St. Vincent de Paul and the ESRI on that. As I understand it, the dividend would go only to those who have managed to reduce their household energy bill. Reducing that bill is not necessarily easy to do in local authority housing. The retrofitting of local authority housing has been mentioned. A private tenant receiving rent supplement or the housing assistance payment may not be in a position to get that. Where does that dividend go? I agree that fuel poverty needs to be considered but a fuel allowance is not the only mechanism for that. If the ESRI believes we should consider poverty does it mean consistent poverty or risk of poverty? My concern is that consistent poverty may be too high a bar.

I concur with Deputy Smith. I worked in Older and Bolder and spoke to people who used to sit all day long in supermarkets because they could not heat their homes. That is a reality for many older people. If those older people feature in the dividend model perhaps they would benefit from a fast-tracked or accelerated investment in retrofitting every home that the State can retrofit.

My last question is for Mr. Kenny but I would of course welcome comments from Mr. Deegan or others. This is a very small sum of money. We should not regard it as revenue raising to deal with climate change. As I said, it is a matter of carbon pricing. Priority recommendation No. 4 in chapter 6 of this committee's report raises the question of a levy on the profits of fuel and related industries. We need a timeline on that. If we are going to ask the public to start switching off their lights because we want to reflect the real price of carbon we cannot allow companies to continue to absorb profits.