David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin will support Financial Resolution No. 1 but it cannot support Financial Resolution No. 2, which proposes an increase in the rate of carbon tax. We oppose the latter for the reason the Minister for Finance and his officials provided at joint committee hearings to the effect that the tax is regressive. It is not going to reduce carbon emissions. We have carbon taxes in the State already and they have not reduced emissions. These increases will make no contribution to the reduction of emissions. We should be honest with people that it is a revenue raising exercise involving a commitment from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to keep increasing the tax right up to 2030. The vast majority of people do not have energy alternatives and what we have heard proposed in the budget today will do nothing for the vast majority of families whose homes are heated by oil or gas. It will do nothing for people who live in rural areas and depend on cars. We do not have public transport for them, which is not something that is going to change for those families anytime soon. Certainly, it will not change under this Government with its lack of investment in those areas. It is a regressive tax. The Minister says he will delay some elements to do with fuels; for example the home heating increase will not be implemented until May 2020 or, to quote him, "until after the winter heating season". Cynics will say it has more to do with the date of the next general election. Whatever about the timing, the increases this year and those signalled for the next number of years represent Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael going again for a regressive tax which will disproportionately hurt those on low and middle incomes. It is not going to work. Sinn Féin supported the sugar tax and the plastic bag levy because people had alternatives which worked. This will not work.

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