The Government’s budget preparations should have taken place on Achill Island in place of the Mayo International Kite Festival held there every summer. The tag line for the festival is “The Sky’s the Limit” – also a fitting summary of the exhaustive number of notions and promises flown by the masters of our economic wellbeing.

Peering beyond the kites, however, brings clarity about one thing: there is not nearly enough political seriousness about climate change in this country.

Tánaiste Simon Harris rightly takes to task those who demand the scrapping of the carbon tax, but in the same breath he says in relation to that levy, “there is flexibility for the Government to do something there if they wish to … we need to consider that in the round”.

This has become a mantra in the annual sky’s-the-limit budget festival. But what “in the round” translates to in relation to climate change mitigation is speaking out of two sides of the mouth.

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