Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I do not like to use scripts but I have edited it down since our time has been cut short. Projects aimed at reducing emissions, increasing renewable energy production, improving energy efficiency and helping regions hit by changes to cut carbon emissions are expected to be the beneficiaries of funding from a climate action fund.

I will cut straight to the chase. There is much welcome detail in this Bill, but my bugbear is the notion of the carbon tax. This was raised already by one of our speakers. I do not want it to be the same, but this is similar to the bailout and austerity with it being the poor will who end up again paying the most. Regarding the last carbon tax rise of €6 in September, it was revealed then that there was no poverty review. That is one thing that will be absolutely vital in securing fairness in this document. Will the Minister of State commit to ensuring that a poverty impact review will be carried out and that the terms of reference for review will go beyond the impact on those worst off in our society and extend to low earners struggling to make ends meet above that very limited threshold?

We cannot claim to care about justice of any kind if our first concern is not on the impact of a policy on those who have the least voice, the least power and the least protection against bad policy. That is the one thing I am worried about and this issue has been raised before. Ordinary workers have no choice when it comes to energy-saving costs. This issue has also been raised before. People in rural communities have to drive and a new electric car is not an option. Many people are living in old, damp and poorly insulated homes. As many of those are also rented, it is not even possible to renovate. There are no advantages for them.

We know that these people on the bottom rung are not the problem. Whatever we want to call austerity, whether green, otherwise or whatever, it is certain that we need to do better to really change anything. The one thing we do not want to do, however, is to make those less fortunate even less well off and still be climate poverty poor when this is finished.

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