Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am not talking about somebody who gets into their car, drives across the Border and buys a few bags of coal. Nobody is concerned about that. That cross-Border trade has happened over the years. We are talking about advertisements, mainly on social media, inviting people to ring a number, pay online and get even tonnes of fuel delivered to their door on a pallet. No carbon tax or VAT is paid on this. The prices being charged indicate it could not be because they greatly undercut those the merchants here have to charge in order to pay carbon tax and VAT.

This has been going on for years and will only get worse as the price of fuel rises due to the increase in carbon tax. Something has to be done. We are fooling ourselves if we think we are helping the environment by ignoring this. Would it not be possible to give the Revenue Commissioners additional powers and resources to track and trace all solid fuel supplied on the Irish market? Some of that which is coming in is not what it is advertised to be and it needs to be checked.

I suggest also providing a dedicated freephone number to allow customers and retailers to report suspected carbon tax and VAT evasion. Fuel merchants frequently do not know who they are supposed to report this issue to and are passed from pillar to post as to whose responsibility it is, and nothing is done about it. There has to be an increase in the penalties associated with non-payment of solid fuel carbon tax. Moreover, there should be incentives to encourage customers to switch from using carbon-intensive solid fuel to low-carbon, low-smoke solid fuel.

It is the poorest people in society who pay carbon tax because they cannot afford to bulk-buy fuel and have it delivered across the Border. They are the people who buy a couple of bags of fuel and pay carbon tax, yet they are the people who can least afford to do so.

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