Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Senator should not be talking about the direction of travel of my party considering the hot water in which his colleagues have found themselves in recent days; let us keep to the Bill.

It is worth acknowledging that the carbon tax puts extra pressure to a certain extent on some people. That is why the Government made a commitment that money would be ring-fenced, and measures would be put in place to mitigate that. The same party that does not want a carbon tax still wants to decarbonise the economy, wants to combat climate change, wants a just transition and wants to retrofit homes. It wants to do all these things that cost money. How does it propose to pay for it?

The purpose of the carbon tax is not to penalise people. It is not to collect money for the Government. It is to take that money that is ring-fenced and spend it on becoming a greener and more environmentally friendly country which we need to do. We all accept we have obligations. It is not just for us. It is for the next generation, the children of today and their children. They need a clean environment and a safe country in which to live and work. We need to protect biodiversity and change how we do things.

Today peat will be burned in Shannonbridge power plant for the last time and the Lanesborough plant is closing next week, which indicates that significant change is happening. I acknowledge the positive role the ESB will play in becoming a green energy company. The Government is committed to a just transition and protecting the workers by providing new opportunities. While it is the end of an era, it is the beginning of a new green era, where we will work alongside our environment to maintain biodiversity while still prospering and creating employment. Carbon tax is only one element of that.

It is populist to suggest this is there to penalise working people, but it is far from it. It is there to create a greener and cleaner environment for our children and their children so that they can breathe clean air and have a healthy and safe country for future generations to live in. The tax that is collected will be ring-fenced. It is not being collected to hurt people. That is not the intention, as has been explained repeatedly. While we acknowledge the potential challenges, the Government has shown it is committed to dealing with those challenges. For energy efficiency our housing stock is the second worst in Europe. We have considerable work to do to retrofit homes to make them more energy efficient and cheaper to run for all the families Senator Gavan mentioned. We need money to do that retrofitting and that is where this money will go.