Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Can the Minister of State confirm that he or the senior Minister signed this contract with Slovakia last month? Can he confirm that the decision was made without any reference to this Dáil debate and that what is happening here is merely a rubber-stamping exercise?

The top ten carbon emitters in Ireland are almost without exception private business interests, including no less than four separate cement plants, yet the bulk of the €3 million the State is paying here for exceeding the carbon targets and the bulk of the far greater sums that will be paid out elsewhere will not be paid by those cement plants nor by the privately owned airlines that put three of our airports into that top ten nor by industry as a whole. Instead the bulk of the funding will come from compliant PAYE taxpayers. This is surely a contradiction of the Green Party policy that the polluter should pay.

See this speech in context