Pa Daly

Good morning, Clare.

What do you think of this?

Yeah, well, first of all, well done to Aisling on a very good story.

The background, of course, to this is that Europe is warming twice as fast, we saw in a report this week, as other parts of the world, as the global average.

And we've seen the climate crisis is here and it's now, and we see that in flooding and we see that in the crisis in biodiversity.

We already knew, just following on from what Aisling says, that a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General, that only 61% of the carbon taxes was actually ring-fenced and there is no central tracking system.

So it's about whether the government is actually managing the money that is coming in in a proper way and in a fair way.

And we already knew about the no central tracking system, but now 70% from Aisling's story of the money raised has been left sitting there.

So we have been saying in Sinn Féin for many years that carbon taxes do not work simply as a behavioural test unless...

there is realistic, affordable and alternative heating for people.

And many, many people in rural, in low-income earners, renters, they don't have that choice to transition over.

Yeah, well, see, the problem with carbon taxes is, first of all, it raises living costs.

It deepens inequality and it punishes people and it generates revenue without delivering proper alternatives for people.

And then resentment builds up in some people who can't afford...

people who are locked out of the transition because they can't get into it.

So what we do need is we do need more targeted retrofitting because you see from the reports from the SRI that retrofitting heat pumps is a fraction of the targets that it should have been by 2024.

Well,

Well, what we have said, Clare, for example, recently and coming up to the last budget in October, is that there shouldn't be any more increases in the carbon tax because it isn't working and because now our argument is even made stronger by the fact of the mismanagement of the money that is coming in.

If the money is being targeted in a proper way, if it is, like, for example, there is a wealth transfer going on, Clare,

in relation to uh ev cars for example uh one-third of the money is being spent on cars that are worth 55 000 euro or more that's not fair uh offshore wind were way behind on our targets onshore wind there's no guidelines awaiting from the last 15 years uh battery storage isn't there uh in in any appreciable extent and energy cloud where you can take money