Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

Environmental justice rarely goes hand in hand with social and economic justice. In this profligate, wasteful world those who have benefitted from this planet living beyond its environmental means have tended to be — internationally and within our own society — those who have what we unfairly define as wealth. Those who have suffered as a result of our wasteful environmental policies are the most disadvantaged. A Bill of this nature would seek to commit both the House and future Governments to abandon such wasteful policies. The effects of the legislation would go beyond that of most legislative measures on the Statute Book, but it is not without precedent. The national pension fund can be referred to as an example in that regard.

The proper instruments must be available to ensure that social and economic justice is achieved as a result of bringing about environmental justice. That unfairness is intensified by choosing not to adopt the required fiscal methods. We rely on taxes that disproportionately affect the poor. According to the Book of Estimates this year, our biggest tax receipts are from value added tax, which cannot be measured at all in terms of environmental input. It is strictly a tax on spending whereby people on the lowest incomes pay the highest proportion of their income in VAT.

New replacement taxes, rather than additional taxes, must be considered seriously. I am somewhat saddened that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is not present in the Chamber. I would have been pleased to see his rabid, Pavlovian response to the word "tax" in any debate.

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