Oisín Coughlan

Yeah, so, I mean, firstly, I have to agree with Pat that it's great reporting by Aisling.

It's a real public service report

It is deeply frustrating that at a time of both a climate emergency and an energy price emergency and a cost of living crisis that the government has piles of money in various climate funds that it's not spending when there are lots and lots of things that it could be spending it on that it's for some reason it can't get its bureaucratic act together to spend.

I absolutely share everybody's real frustration with that.

I do think it's worth getting the taxes part in perspective.

I want to come on and see how we get past that.

So the Nora levy is two cents per liter of diesel or petrol.

So the price of those fuels have gone up by 30, 40 cents since the Iran attack happened.

Absolutely.

The other thing to say is that the Nora levy has now been decreased significantly.

Just to get the sense of it, the carbon tax before the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, the carbon tax was 16 cents on a litre of fuel and the ordinary excise was 54 cents.

So the ordinary excise way towards the carbon tax.

I say that because they tend to get conflated, particularly by people, not PAH, but by people who want to distract from climate action altogether.

They tend to conflate it all together.

And the excise has been reduced by 30 cents.

So the reduction in tax on our fuels...

has been twice as much as the entire carbon tax over the last few weeks.

That's not to take away from the frustration though, because what's really annoying here is that the government is six months behind now, or five months behind on having their climate action plan, the first one that they've produced themselves as this government.

They're six months behind at a time when

everyone sees more than ever how urgent it is to get off fossil fuels, because this is what's causing this crisis.