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

I support this amendment very much. A carbon tax increases the price of goods and services. By design, a carbon tax causes goods and services that involve higher levels of emissions to become relatively more expensive such that consumers will tend to buy less of them or substitute others that involve less carbon-intensive production. Hence, a carbon tax makes coal, oil, natural gas and the electricity they are used to generate more expensive. It also makes goods and services that are delivered by means of their use or that depend heavily on them in the context of their production more expensive.

Is a carbon tax regressive? A tax is regressive if it takes up a larger share of a lower-income household's expenditure. John Podesta, a former adviser to Barack Obama, raised concerns about the equity of carbon taxes by arguing "A real disadvantage of just a pricing scheme is you can’t directly attack the environmental injustice problem". This reflects a broad perception that a carbon tax is regressive after all. The argument is that a carbon tax is a tax on energy and energy is a good that takes up a larger share of the budgets for low-income households than it does for higher-income households. Who is going to be directly affected by this but those who are less able to pay for it?

We are an island. Everything rolls; nothing falls out of the sky. I compliment the people involved in our haulage and transport sector. The people in vans might be getting ready as we speak. They might be about to go out working for the night to drive goods across the length and breadth of this country. Who stocks the shops in the morning? Who delivers the newspapers? Who delivers the mail? It is the hauliers and the people involved in that industry. If the cost of fuel and transport is to go up again, all it will do is mean everything has a knock-on effect from that.

I am sure those in government are very smart. They must realise that we must do everything we can to reduce carbon tax instead of increasing it. It is very simplistic to say we will reduce the amount of carbon we produce by taxing it. There are plenty of other things the Government could do instead of just imposing a tax to stop people living a way of life or using goods they need to use. It is a flawed idea and a flawed ideal. It is so crazy to see at budget time. The Government is imposing a carbon tax that will increase the cost of living for low-income households in particular. What does it do then? It tries to come up with imaginative ways of putting money back into those people's pockets. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul and going around the table in a merry dance. If the Government would only think about what it was doing. If it did not tax people so much in the first instance it would not have to be looking at other ways of trying to give them back money. I cannot see the logic in it. I cannot see the sense in it. I would like to think I am very plausible and reasonable when it comes to looking at arguments put forward by others, but I cannot make sense out of this. There is one thing I will never understand even if I live forever, namely, that people will go around County Kerry canvassing and saying they are on the side of the people and then when they come up here, they completely and absolutely forget those who sent them here in the first instance.

They leave those people behind. It is as if they fell into Dáil Éireann in a parachute and nobody had to vote for them to come here at all. It is wrong and unfair. I would remind anyone listening tonight that a politician is a servant of the people. These people forget that. They are there for the betterment of the people. They are sent here to do a job and that is to be a spokesperson for their community and the area they represent. They are to be there for the good of people and to be fair and balanced. How can anybody come in here and press the buzzer to vote for additional taxes and carbon taxes? The Government would tax people for breathing if it could get away with it. How can these people can go back to the people who voted them in and say they forgot about them when they were above in Dublin? They just lined in behind the Minister and voted away and did not really care about them at all but forgot about them. People have memories. People are able to look at what goes on in debates. People are able to follow and see what way people vote. I would ask the people in County Kerry to look at the way people are voting when it comes to representing them here in Dáil Éireann because my goodness, as far as I can see, they are being let down very badly by this Government when it comes to taxation and attacking people at a time when they are vulnerable. We should be doing everything we can with the cost of electricity, insurance, fuel and home heating oil. A bag of coal is nearly €50 and it could possibly be €50 for Christmas.

The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications is gone on a tangent trying to stop people burning turf. If he had his way, people would perish inside in their homes. He has no consideration whatsoever for people because he seems to be insulated from feeling what the people out there on the ground are feeling. It is a cliche to say the Government has lost touch with reality but it is true when it comes to a person who talks about introducing wolves and car pooling and says we should not have a car of our own. He thinks people should walk down from the hills and the mountains, go to the village and hope there are a couple of cars there and that they might be lucky enough to jump into one and go off on their merry way for the day. He is to be taken seriously as a Minister in a Government. He went off to represent us at a conference recently. He is incapable of doing so without having 50 people to mind him and guide him and hold his hand along the way. It would have been a fine thing if he had stayed at home. We would have been better represented if he did not go at all because if we are sending the wrong man or the wrong woman out we would be better off having nobody there speaking for us.

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