Budget 2019: Climate experts, economists and activists ‘shocked’ by carbon tax exclusion

According to Friends of the Earth Director Oisin Coghlan, all of Leo Varadkar’s “fine words” about climate action will now be seen as “hot air”.

The u-turn, he said, is a “giant two-fingers to younger generations” who will face the wider impacts of climate change.

The move was also an insult to the Paris Agreement and the hundreds of millions “already living with the devastating impacts of climate change in Africa, Asia and Latin America”, he added.

Irish Rural Link said today that it welcomed the Government’s decision not to increase carbon tax as this will “protect the incomes of most vulnerable”.

“We now call on the Department of Finance to hold dialogue with interested stakeholders to discuss fuel poverty in context with carbon emissions,” the group tweeted today.

Mr Coghlan said, however, that carbon tax can incentivize investment towards “cleaner, less polluting options” without impacting rural or lower income families.

“Other taxes can be reduced, the income can be recycled to support the transition and in the most radical model the revenue can be repaid as a dividend to every adult, giving a cash reward to everyone who reduces their own carbon footprint,” he added.

Photo: Jonathan Petersson

There was a one per cent increase in the VRT surcharge for diesel cars across all bands in Budget 2019. Environmental groups had expressed the need to equalise the cost of diesel and petrol.

Diesel is currently charged at 11c less per litre than petrol and Ireland has one of the highest percentage sales of diesel cars in Europe.

The State has been told by the OECD that this preferential tax rate has “little economic, social or environmental rationale”, while the European Commission said to even out this “environmentally unjustified” gap.

Last July, the Department of Finance’s tax strategy group itself found that dieselisation is a “growing issue” that, if left unaddressed, will “result in negative environmental and health outcomes”.

More recently, the Economic and Social Research Institute found that increasing the excise duty on diesel to the level of petrol could bring in €500 million a year and also reduce dangerous emissions.

The Environmental Pillar said that an increase in excise would also have helped stave off the health risks from diesel that is linked to Alzheimer’s, slower brain development in children and heightened risk of diabetes and preterm births.

“Budget 2019 was an opportunity to try and change this situation not just for our planet but for the health of the Irish people here and now. The Government has clearly gone in a disappointing direction,” the Pillar said.

I see the first three measures under "climate change" are subsidies for agriculture, when these subsidies, especially for suckler beef, INCREASE emissions.

This is a Father Ted budget by @campaignforleo

I've fixed your list of "climate" measures below pic.twitter.com/8HkUIeyY3f

— jmcurtin (@jmcurtin) October 9, 2018

What’s in the Budget?

There will be just over €100m put aside in Budget 2019 for planting forests, although the Government did not specify how this pot will be split between the planting of native woodland and conifer plantations that have been heavily criticised by environmental and farming groups.

The budget also sets aside €70m for the environment and waste management programme, as well as funding for a Beef Environmental Efficiency Pilot and an agricultural modernisation scheme.

Mr Curtin said on Twitter this afternoon, however, that these measures are actually “subsidies for agriculture” that will actually lead to an increase in emissions.

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