Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last Monday, my colleagues and I had a very important meeting with the excellent CEO of Kerry County Council, Ms Moira Murrell, and other directors of services with the council, including Michael Scannell, Charlie O'Sullivan, head of finance Angela McAllen, and others. One of the items on the agenda was the deficit in local authority funding. I am fearful that there will be cuts in basic day-to-day services, such as taking care of housing stock, work on essential issues like roads and keeping services like libraries and public toilets open. Our county will not be able to progress with new projects and initiatives. Rather, it will struggle to provide essential services like those I have outlined already. All our local authority has got so far is six months of a subvention on rates but it will now have to go after businesses looking for the other six months' worth of rates. How in heaven's name can we go after cinemas, for example, which barely opened to very small numbers, and ask them to pay rates? Our excellent county councillors on our local authority had to vote blindly on a property tax last week, not knowing what money they will be getting from central government.

Now we are faced with a new issue, namely, the climate Bill. New responsibility will be put on local authorities, which will be required to produce annual climate action plans, dealing with both the mitigation and adaptation sides of climate issues. Frans Timmermans, the European Commissioner and Vice-President in charge of overseeing the European green deal, says we must plough ahead with this agenda at all costs. What about the implications of imposing billions of euro of extra taxes on a public that is in dire straits and hurting already?

I will get a bit personal about this, not because she is my daughter as there are many other people's daughters. Rosie Healy-Rae and Micheál O'Shea, a very nice, young, respectable local man were getting married this Saturday. It has been cancelled. The implications and the economic bang of that for the hotel, the hairdressers, the car hire company and the people who provide the flowers is enormous. That is only an example; there are other people. 10-10-20 was going to be their special day, like a bag of fertiliser.

While all this is going on, the Tánaiste and the Cabinet are signing up to €9.5 billion of additional carbon taxes on a public who, like I say, are really hurting. It will be €1 billion a year of additional taxes. I am not a climate change denier. I want to protect all species on this planet, including the human species. It is suggested that households may have to pay excise duty on their electricity to compensate for the drop in revenue to the State from the people switching from petrol and diesel to electric vehicles. This is according to a report from the Department of Finance's tax strategy group. People will be penalised for going green.

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