Brid Smith accuses Eamon Ryan of being responsible for the unjust increase in coal prices

  People Before Profit candidate for the Euro elections, Bríd Smith, has condemned today’s €1.20 hike in the price of a bag of coal under guise of the carbon tax as yet another attack on the purses of ordinary people. She attacked the main political parties for targeting people with the weakest voice or power as an easy source of funding.

Bríd Smith commented: “This is the second successive rise in the carbon tax and will mean that a 40kg bag of coal will rise in cost by €1.20 and a single bale of briquettes will go up by 26c. The average cost of a bag of coal is €18 and a whooping €2.40 of this is now made up of carbon tax, while 52c of the cost of a bail of briquettes is made up of carbon tax. These increases are being presented as a so called environmental tax but the reality is that it is  the poorest in society who are paying the cost.

“There is blatant inconsistency in the way this tax is being applied as those most guilty of  increasing carbon emissions are big industry.  Green Party MEP candidate Eamon Ryan was instrumental in introducing this charge. At the same time his government allowed huge peat powered energy stations to spew out massive amounts of CO2 with the rest of us having to pay the cost.

“The Green Party is now attempting to reinvent itself as a voice for the people while pushing under the carpet its role in ensuring that the ordinary household budget will be repeatedly targeted for needed government funding. Eamon Ryan has effectively air-brushed out of the record his role as a senior minister in the last government.

“Unlike the Green Party and the other establishment political parties People Before Profit will put people before profit and make the real polluters pay and not those at the bottom of the chain.”