Mr. Sebastian Barnes:

This is a major area. As I said, this will involve a massive social and economic transition. The country is going to look very different after we have made these changes, which are, of course, absolutely necessary because of the urgency of the climate situation. For some time now we have been concerned the Government has not provided an assessment or full costing of how it thinks these forces are going to play out, either for the economy or for the public finances. One of the costs is going to be higher investment in energy, insulation and these kinds of things and our sense is much of that is included in the national development plan, so it seems to be accounted for.

What is less certain is the kind of current ongoing spending that might be needed and also things, for example, like compensating those whose incomes are adversely affected by these changes. What we see now with the higher energy prices is partly related to that. There is also the impact on the tax system if we are all driving electric cars in ten years. The Government makes a significant amount of money from motor fuel taxes. What is going to replace that? How is that going to be managed? There are a lot of really big questions to be answered. Some of the work is starting to be done. We see the paper I mentioned from Dr. John FitzGerald that has estimates of about 2% of national income per year. That gives you a sense of the kind of numbers. This is an area the council is working on. I think the Central Bank is working on it too. The Climate Change Advisory Council has put out some more data as well, which is helpful, so I think we are getting there. Most countries in Europe are in the same situation as we are, that we are basically a long way behind in our analysis of this major change, but I hope there will be some progress in the time to come. It should be a major priority of the Government to work out the impact of this, because it is going to huge.