Carbon tax is last thing economy needs
Monday January 12 2009
WASN'T it just typical of this Government that on the very day nearly 2,000 job losses were announced in Limerick, not to mention the other 8,000 redundancies that will probably follow, our two Green Party ministers decided to announce that a carbon tax would be introduced in the next Budget.
Our ridiculously high energy costs have regularly been raised by companies as a bar against doing business here, yet our Green ministers were far more interested in their own self-serving, small-minded Green Party agenda.
What foreign company in its right mind would set up here when we already have the highest energy costs in Europe? Yet our clueless Government seems oblivious to the economic disaster that is unfolding before our eyes.
There is a saying "you get the Government you deserve" and, sadly for Ireland, we are finding this out at a great cost.
The economic mismanagement by successive Fianna Fail-led governments has seen our competitiveness erode, with energy and wage costs, amongst others, rising exponentially and an infrastructure that is way behind most of Europe.
Our hopeless Government will undoubtedly set up more taskforces and moan that there is nothing they can do about the recession.
NIALL GILMARTIN
KILDARE
WITH this country in the grip of the worst recession in decades, the Greens are proposing a tax increase in the guise of a "carbon tax". How pathetic. Listening to the Greens' constant sermonising is bad enough, but, really, who in their right mind thinks another tax increase is what this country needs right now?
Economic issues are far more critical to Irish people than environmental ones, and that is the cold hard reality despite what the smug Greens might think.
John Gormley (pictured) said the proposed tax "would also act to place a premium on sustainability in energy into the future". Does anyone know what this bunkum actually means? Unfortunately no one will be able to challenge this assertion as it is completely meaningless political guff.
These clowns are so completely out of touch with economic realities they have no place in government.
GERARD FAHY
BLACKROCK, CO DUBLIN
