Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

As Chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security, I see a total contradiction here. The whole purpose of the ETS scheme was to try to do away with carbon emissions. Anything that would promote alternative sources of energy should be encouraged in Europe and through our tax code. The whole question of the use of coal to generate power is causing us untold problems as we face fines from Europe because of the energy production sector. We are way above our targets in terms of fossil fuel use for energy production. Innovations like geothermal power are receiving very little encouragement and legislation for new types of power generation is lagging. Surely our tax system should encourage the transfer to new forms of power generation such as wind and wave energy. It is extraordinary that one can derive a greater tax advantage by generating power from coal, which is one of the main sources of CO2 emissions.

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