Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It must be difficult to try to balance all the factors that must be taken into account when pulling together a budget under the sort of economic, social and political system we live in, but no doubt, the Government is doing it. That is what it does all the time and it makes clear political decisions about where and what it targets in terms of revenue raising.

I want to put it into the context of the three crises we are facing across the globe. Obviously, the pandemic and climate change are massive crises and, as a consequence of those, the failure of the competitive and irresponsible capitalist system we live under, an economic crisis is looming large over us. With that trio facing it, the Government has designed a budget.

One thing stands out for me, however, and I say this mainly as somebody who participated for months on end in a special committee that was set up to look at how we deal with climate change. The climate action committee was given resources. People were employed to help, advise and work with us to work through all the modules and stuff we had to look at. We got experts in from around the world. We got financial experts and scientists in and we did months of work on the climate action plan.

That plan is now being used as cover for what the Government describes as a "cross-party consensus" on how we should go forward with climate action. However, the main thing coming out of the Government's action plan is an increase in carbon taxes that is locked in, year-on-year, for ten years. The Minister of State was not a member of that committee but those of us who were will remember the long debates we had on this issue. We never reached a cross-party consensus on it. Instead, a number of us stood our ground and argued what we thought was the obvious point that carbon taxes would not help to reduce emissions and reliance on fossil fuels but would, in fact, function as a regressive measure directed at the wrong target. The increase in carbon taxes diverts attention away from the systemic nature of carbon pollution, which is rooted in the free market economy and the vested interests of fossil fuel corporations. Those corporations continue to profit from their reliance on oil, coal and gas, as do the companies that rely on the production of plastic. The Government is asking ordinary people to shoulder the blame for the climate action that has not been taken, when 71% of all emissions come from 100 global corporations. This approach is not only regressive but it is also dangerous. It ignores the rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented transitions in energy, land and urban infrastructure, including transport, buildings and industrial systems. We are told that the increase in carbon taxes will be ring-fenced and used to implement the plans that are needed around these transitions, including a just transition. In fact, that is exactly what it will not do.

In the course of the long and tedious committee debate to which I referred, we pushed very hard for the Government to commission a comprehensive inquiry into the extent and nature of fuel poverty across all cohorts of the population. We asked that the impacts of an increased carbon tax on all those cohorts in the short, medium and long term be considered prior to the introduction of any such increase. We did not get cross-party support for our proposals. As I said, however, there also was not cross-party support for the approach the Government is taking, which is to impose year-on-year increase in carbon taxes, for ten years, without first bringing in the measures that will help people to change their personal behaviour. Saoirse McHugh, a former member of the Green Party and candidate for the European Parliament, has spoken about the difficulty for her, living on Achill Island, of changing her personal behaviour when there are no buses to take her around and off the island. She relies on a diesel-fuelled car to get around. How can she change her behaviour when she cannot afford to retrofit the old and cold stone cottage in which she lives? The supports are not coming from the State to the people who need them most. At yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on Climate Action, Professor Kevin Anderson denounced increases in carbon taxes as a weapon that was being used to punish the wrong people. He pointed out that the very wealthy are the biggest consumers and producers of CO₂emissions on the planet. The people we should be going after, he said, are those who fly most often, live in bigger houses and drive faster cars.

There was one recommendation on which we did reach cross-party agreement in the Joint Committee on Climate Action of the last Dáil. Resources were spent on employing people and engaging experts from around the globe, the committee did its work and there was one priority recommendation we managed to get passed. That recommendation stated:

That this committee recommends that the Department of Finance commission an inquiry into the revenue that could be realised through the introduction of a carbon tax on the profits of corporations and firms directly linked to the production and sale of gas, oil, coal and other fossil fuels. That inquiry should look at the revenue that could be realised from the imposition of a carbon tax on the profits of other corporations and firms linked to the high usage of fossil fuels, including aviation, shipping, etc.

What has become of that cross-party recommendation? Is the Minister of State aware of any inquiry in his Department into how we might raise what would, I believe, be far greater amounts of revenue by taxing the real polluters rather than ordinary people? I am sure every Deputy in the House has spoken to a plethora of people who have had to make the choice between having a hot meal or heating their home. Many of these people are only a few measly euro above the threshold that would entitle them to a fuel allowance. That is happening everywhere. Representatives from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul told the committee that, in their view, the level of fuel poverty in households throughout the country is significantly underestimated. They have done the research and they work at the coalface with the people they have to subsidise. They spoke about having given out some €4 million in subsidies to help people to pay their electricity and gas bills and buy coal, turf or sticks to heat their homes.

The Government has chosen to ignore that evidence and to impose increases that will penalise those who can least afford it. It has ignored the priority recommendation of the committee tasked with examining the issue, which points them in the direction of where they can raise the most revenue, namely, by going after the big polluters, not the people who will struggle to survive through this winter. I take this opportunity to raise an issue that really needs to be raised again. The same people are being penalised by the pay-as-you-go utility companies by the way in which the €100 subsidy that was given at the beginning of the lockdown is being clawed back. That money, which people used to top up their gas or electricity meters, is being taken back at a rate of 60%. If they top up their pay-as-you-go card by a tenner, for example, they will get €4 worth of heat and energy for it. That is happening everywhere and every Deputy in the House knows it. When people are dependent on this way of paying their utility bills, it means they are living hand to mouth and are struggling to pay their bills week by week. The people in that situation are mainly on social protection but they also include people on low pay, pensioners etc. This reality is being ignored by the Government. The utility companies should be brought in and told to stop this practice immediately. Indeed, in the case of any subsidy that has been given during this lockdown and any subsidy that is given during future lockdowns - I expect there will be more lockdowns because of the refusal to pursue a zero Covid strategy - it should not be permitted to recoup that subsidy, in a merciless and vulgar way, from people who can little afford to pay it back at the rate demanded. The Government must intervene on this issue straight away.

To reiterate, the idea that there is cross-party consensus for the raising of carbon taxes on ordinary people is absolutely false. There is no such consensus. In fact, the largest Opposition party is opposed to it. It is not just the socialists and parties of the left who are against it; Sinn Féin and other Independent and Opposition Deputies are also opposed. The Government is choosing to ignore what we are screaming at it. It is locking in the carbon tax for ten years without introducing a single measure to reduce CO₂emissions. The Joint Committee on Climate Action is engaged in pre-legislative scrutiny of the climate action and low carbon development (amendment) Bill 2020, which the Government wants to push through before Christmas. That Bill will define the governance structure around which we deal with climate change. One of the proposed provisions is that the Minister must have regard to 25 separate conditions before a single climate action is implemented. Those conditions include consideration of the specific and special nature of the cattle herd and the healthiness of the competition within the economy at the time. The Government cannot accommodate 25 competing interests and, at the same time, say it is taking the action necessary to bring us in line with the Paris Agreement requirement to bring down our CO₂emissions. All it is doing is punishing the most vulnerable and increasing the burden on those who are at least responsible for the disgraceful situation we are in.

As the planet hurtles towards more droughts, runaway fires, floods and starvation, which will mostly impact its poorest inhabitants, including the poor in this country who pay the most for flood damage to their homes and so on, the Government offers no solution other than to go after those people again and let the fossil fuel, aviation and shipping industries run as rampantly as they choose. The Government is barking up the wrong tree, not only by imposing carbon taxes on ordinary people but by locking them in for the next ten years. It is utterly outrageous, disgraceful and the wrong way to go about deling with CO₂emissions.

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