David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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That is fine. We need to look at how much money came in and how it was spent. Equally, because of its nature, this was meant to be a tax that would encourage people to change their behaviour by reducing carbon emissions etc. It would also be good to get a sense, from a value-for-money perspective, of whether the tax has done that. The logic of the tax was to reduce people's dependency on carbon. It does not seem to have done that and therefore it would be good to see if we can get as much information as possible from those Departments.

If we take the examples of the plastic bag levy and the sugar tax, I imagine they were much more successful because people had obvious alternatives. It was possible to go from a Coke to a Coke Zero very easily and there are alternatives to plastic bags. Those are levies which I support and which work. Things are less clear if we focus in on the carbon tax. It is less if it is serving the purpose for which it was first established. There is also the issue concerning where the money goes once it is raised and whether it is being used to reduce people's dependency on carbon. Regarding that value for money aspect and whether it changes people's behaviour, and therefore reduces emissions, can we get as much information as possible from the Departments? I refer, in particular, to figures for emissions each year since the carbon tax came in. I would like to know if emissions have gone up or down. It will be said that this is counter-factual in that even though emissions went up, that was because the economy grew. It is difficult to get information in this area, however. Nobody from the Department, that I have seen, is able to give any concrete proof that the carbon tax has changed the behaviour of people and is serving the purpose for which it was introduced. That would be an interesting element to explore.