We use Google Analytics to see which pages are read and how the site is used, so we know what to improve. This only runs if you accept. See our privacy notice for details.

Dáil
‹ Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation

Carbon tax on farm diesel

Summary

Deputy Mattie McGrath demanded abolition of carbon tax on agricultural diesel for contractors and farmers. The Minister said carbon-tax revenue is ring-fenced and returned through rebates and climate-related spending, prompting criticism that no relief would be given.

I ask the Minister to do something meaningful. He said the Government was doing a lot for the cost of oil. I am asking the Government to abolish the carbon tax on agricultural diesel for farm contractors, forestry contractors and farmers. Otherwise, we will not have a harvest and we will not have silage. The Minister's colleague beside him, the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, knows about this intimately. I ask that this be done for a period of five years at least. This is a wartime situation, as the Minister referred to himself, but this was coming down the tracks anyway ever before that. I also ask the Government to ring-fence over 200 million litres of agricultural diesel for the harvesting of silage, corn and all the crops it is talking about planting. We also need it for ordinary farm work and forestry work that has to be carried out because we have a shortage of timber already. Are we going to have a shortage of everything? If this is not managed properly, there will be chaos. I am asking for a period of five years. Tell the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, to cop onto himself because this is a wartime situation. His little dreams and plans are not working. They are crippling farmers and contractors and we have to deal with this meaningfully.

Comment on this

We accept that no part of Irish society is immune to the effects of what is happening internationally. That includes our farm families and the contractors on whom farmers rely to do so much of the work on farms. There is a form of rebate for giving some of the carbon tax back to farmers but I would make the broader point that the carbon tax we collect is ring-fenced. It does not go into the general Exchequer. It is paid back by way of-----

Comment on this

So the Government will not do anything for them.

Comment on this

-----fuel poverty measures, retrofitting, new agri-environmental schemes in the Common Agricultural Policy.

Comment on this