Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the broader scheme of things, compared with other increases that have happened because of pressures in the market and so on, the impact of this is not similar in scale.

However, the Deputy has rightly raised issues about payments to farmers. A third of that revenue goes to farmers in terms of environmental schemes. A third goes to retrofitting. The Deputy will come in to me another day asking for an expansion of the retrofitting scheme and the elasticity of it - make it simpler, make it better, provide better grants and so on. Then there are the fuel allowances. Up to €1,200 in per-person payments were made last year in respect of fuel allowances. All that is coming from the revenue that is raised from the carbon tax. It enables a sustainable revenue stream for those three areas: farming, fuel poverty and retrofitting. Without it, I do not think the retrofitting scheme would have expanded to the degree that it has. We acknowledge that we can improve upon that scheme, but that is the trade-off.

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