Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Therefore, the only university heralded by Sinn Féin this evening to advance its cause regarding carbon taxing, the party's view on which I am still not clear on, a point to which I will come to in a moment, did publish a paper by one of its members of staff on carbon taxation, but many other papers from the same university acknowledge the role of carbon taxation and carbon pricing and make that case.

That is not to say for a moment that I or this Government does not fully appreciate or recognise the impact that rising prices and the rising cost of energy are having on many people in our country and our society at the moment. Many people, just as we emerge from the darkness of a pandemic and as they were looking forward to and hoping for better, different, brighter days, are now confronted by the challenge of their standard of living going down as the price of many things goes up. The Government absolutely recognises that and we have acted on it in the measures we brought forward on budget day and last week. Those measures mean that, for example, a single person living alone whose only income comes from the State will receive between €600 and €800 more in payments from the State this year versus last year. That is €600 to €800 of additional support from the State. I am not saying for a moment that they are that amount better off. I fully appreciate the challenge so many face. This is additional support, it is needed and the Government recognises that it has to be delivered quickly. With the various changes we have made to personal tax credits and to the amount of income on which one can pay the lower rate of income tax, combined with the changes of a few weeks ago, somebody on the standard rate of income tax will receive, after they have paid their taxes, an additional €400 to €600 per year in recognition of the challenge that is developing and the impact that rising costs and changes in inflation are having on living standards. We understand it. We get it. We have acted. We have brought forward measures to make a difference. A standard approach from the Opposition and from Sinn Féin, however, is to claim that we do not get it, that we do not understand and that we cannot appreciate the lived reality or the difficulty many face. This Government does. However, just as I would never claim to have a monopoly on wisdom on any topic, nobody in this House, as I say again and again, should claim a monopoly on compassion. We recognise the challenges many people face but we also have constraints. As we indicated earlier today, we have a national debt now approaching €250 billion. We have constraints in other areas on which this House wants us to make progress and on which we need to spend the country's money.

We have heard again in this House the claim that one can recognise the challenge of climate change and also be against carbon taxing. Maybe, just maybe, one can, but there are not many scientists or economists who support that claim. I always recognise, however, the autonomy and independence of everybody in the House to form a view not in keeping with the mainstream view on any given topic. That is the essence of democracy. You cannot say, however, that you are in favour of mitigating the effects of climate change and of avoiding a climate collapse while also pretending that there are no difficult choices. Given the change that is happening in our environment, in a week in which we have seen multiple storms batter our country, with another to come, it must be recognised that extreme change is already happening. What the Government is doing, in standing by the changes we will make in a number of weeks' time, is asking the country to see that in conjunction with all the measures we have taken to protect those who need help the most, the additional funding to be raised through increased carbon taxation will be used to fund retrofitting, changes to social welfare payments, changes in transport and more sustainable ways of living within our communities. That is what this money is being used for. The very Sinn Féin that, on the day the climate action plan was published, came out and attacked it for being vague, not having ambition and lacking detail is the same Sinn Féin that attacks any way the Government can fund it. Sinn Féin attacks the plan for being unambitious; it is against any way of funding it. Sinn Féin is creating the sense, the myth, that it is possible to make progress on this civilisational challenge without there being difficult choices.

We appreciate and understand that the act of putting up these carbon taxes is difficult for many, but that is why the Government has put in place measures to help.

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That is why we are using the revenue from the additional rates of carbon taxation to do all we can to help our society to either mitigate the change that is coming or get ready to deal with the consequences. For that reason, we do not accept the motion.

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