Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit go dtí an Teach. We know that aviation's climate impact is disproportionate and it continues to grow quickly. Emissions from private jets are growing even faster than the rest of the aviation industry with a 31% increase in CO2 emissions between 2005 and 2019. In just one hour, a single private jet can emit 2 tonnes of CO2 whereas the average Irish person emits 12.3 tonnes of CO2 over the course of an entire year and that is high by EU standards.

We know from the Oxfam carbon inequality report that flights are a major contributor to the carbon footprints the rich and famous. Footprints from aviation alone were found to be in excess of 1,000 tonnes per year for some celebrities. This summer the twitter account @CelebJets was used to highlight the outrageous carry-on of celebrities like Taylor Swift, Drake and Kylie Jenner and their absurdly short journeys by private jets from as little as ten minutes. People were rightly outraged because it points to the deep hypocrisy that currently exists around climate action where wealthy people seem to be exempt from any sort of change.

Sinn Féin believes that not all emissions are created equal. Climate justice scholars have long distinguished between luxury emissions and subsistence emissions. The latter arise from people meeting their basic needs in the absence of alternatives, while the former are produced by wealthy people who demonstrate just how wealthy they are. For too long, climate action has been about punishing ordinary working-class people and heaping guilt on them for living in a society that has locked them into a carbon-centric lifestyle and makes it very difficult and expensive for them to change. At the same time the wealthy seem to be exempt and continue to live carbon-intensive lifestyles.

Sinn Féin believes luxury emissions need to be pursued, not only because it is the right thing to do to tackle climate change, but because it demonstrates to wider society that we are serious about a just transition. It would also help to bring people along in the enormous challenge for society of tackling climate change. Sinn Féin proposes a tax of €3,000 on the departure of private jets from this State should be introduced. Canada has recently imposed a luxury tax on the sale and importation of high-value cars, planes and boats, while Switzerland has proposed taxing private-jet flights. According to data collected by the NGO, Transport & Environment, 5,998 private jets departed from the State in 2019 and in its paper, Private Jets: Can the Super-Rich Supercharge Zero Emission Aviation?, Transport & Environment proposed a €3,000 levy on private jet departures to account for the environmental damage that they cause.

These are genuine behavioural taxes because, as we all know, feasible more environmentally friendly alternatives are available to individuals to choose instead. The same cannot be said for the general carbon tax which does not distinguish the luxury from the necessary, nor consider the alternatives.Such a tax shows there is an alternative to generating the revenues needed to fund the wider fight against the climate crisis but I urge the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to consider a tax on luxury emissions. This is just one example of them, namely, to try to get a handle on the completely unjustified depletion of the world's scarce remaining carbon budget by those who have very, very deep pockets and who are well able to fund the decarbonisation process.