Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I take the Minister of State’s point and there has been a good engagement on this issue. My point is that while most of us are going to have to pay more, it should not fall disproportionately on lower-income workers. As the OECD has evidenced, one in four workers in the State are lower-income workers. Unfortunately, given the way the Government has constituted this measure in this budget, that is exactly what it is doing.

Another point, which has been made by many environmentalists, is that if carbon tax is introduced in a regressive manner, it could have the unintended consequence of undermining confidence in these important measures that must be taken for the environment. That is what we are talking about here now, because as the Minister of State would acknowledge, the lowest-paid workers in the State will not benefit from the countermeasures that the Government has put in place. There is something fundamentally wrong with that and it should not happen in this manner.