Eamon Ryan: Government will examine taxing higher-polluting SUVs
The committee had heard from transport and sustainability experts in September that SUVs would have been the sixth-largest emitter of carbon in the world last year if they were a country. File photo: David Parry/PA
Taxing higher-polluting SUVs is a measure that the Government will examine over the next year, Eamon Ryan has said.
The Environment and Transport Minister told the Oireachtas Climate Committee that "we will go back and look at the tax issue" next October around budget time.
"One of the things I will be saying to the Minister for Finance is if you look at an SUV, and think over the 10 or 15 years of its lifetime what the emissions are.
"There are also safety issues around SUVs, but if you look at just the emissions from a non-electric SUV, and you calculate that over the 10 years, whatever it is, what is the cost to the Exchequer if we don't meet our European commitments," he said, referring to EU rules around reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"That may change the Department of Finance view, I hope, in continuing where we have been going, which is to tax more for the high-polluting and less for the non-polluting. The economic case for that becomes all the stronger when you realise that an SUV running for 15 years is costing the Irish public in terms of its emissions," Mr Ryan said.
That may justify alterations to the tax system, the minister told TDs and senators.
The committee had heard from transport and sustainability experts in September that SUVs would have been the sixth-largest emitter of carbon in the world last year if they were a country, while cars are now 300kg heavier than they were since the beginning of the century.
Mr Ryan also told the committee that while he didn't want to blame both planning and the legal system for the slow pace of the low-emissions transformation of society, it can be "an incredibly elongated" time frame to get things done.
"We do clearly have a problem in our planning system and in our legal system. It leads to delivery of certain projects in a timeline that is not compatible with our climate targets," he said.
The system takes 10 years to deliver a bus lane, he claimed.
"We have a whole load of wind and solar projects that as soon as they get out of planning, tend to be judicially reviewed, and that takes another incredibly elongated and very expensive process that I don't think necessarily serves the public sometimes," he said.
The current Planning Bill is a "critical piece of legislation," he claimed.
The planning bill, which the Government says will streamline a cumbersome system, has come under fire from many quarters since it was first published, with concerns expressed about ordinary people's access to justice, as well as the likes of environmental groups' ability to challenge public authorities.
