Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to follow the same line as the previous speaker. Is increasing the carbon tax the only way to coerce people to live environmentally friendly lives? Is increasing taxes all the time to change people's bad fossil fuel habits the only way forward the witnesses can see? Do they have any alternative way to get people to move from fossil fuels such as diesel, petrol and coal? Are there other incentives that could be offered besides hitting them with an increase in the carbon tax all the time? Excise duty is levied on petrol and diesel to keep the country running and we are adding more and more. How can we compensate the people mentioned by the previous speaker, the marginalised and the poor, who do not earn high wages or are in receipt of social welfare payments?

How are we going to compensate them? Those on a big wage or who have money can afford all these taxes and to live the same kind of lifestyle they have been living because they have extra money, but the people who are caught are the marginalised, who are barely surviving from week to week. All these taxes will hit them more. It is getting harder for them to survive. The Government is saying it will compensate them in a certain way, but I believe that, at the end of the day, they will still lose out. I have a general question. Is there any other way of getting people to change their habits besides imposing tax after tax?