I thank the Minister of State for being in the Chamber to discuss this issue. Last week, I met a delegation of solid fuel merchants who are members of a newly formed organisation. Every town and village in the country has a fuel merchant. Unfair competition is shattering their trade. Approximately 50% of the coal that is being used in the country is coming down from Northern Ireland. It is estimated that €100 million worth of coal products will come from the Six Counties into the Twenty-six Counties this year. For better or worse, we have a carbon tax in this country. VAT is also applied to solid fuel products. That puts our fuel merchants in a completely unviable situation whereby they are not able to compete with the products coming from Northern Ireland. Those products are not subject to carbon tax and VAT in the same way as products sourced in the Twenty-six Counties. The vast majority of the products coming down are illegal to be used in the South. Smoky coal is the principal such product. It has been banned in the Twenty-six Counties. Smoky coal is coming down from Northern Ireland in very large quantities nonetheless.

Carbon tax increased again on 1 May and added 90 cent to the cost of a bag of coal. We know that carbon tax is a climate action measure and we are not here to argue about the carbon tax. This is about a level playing field. Unfortunately, there is no surveillance of where products are coming from at the moment. Three recommendations have been made to me by the fuel merchants. The first is that a mandatory licence should be put in place for all fuel merchants. They feel that is the first requirement to bring some regulation to the business. It is unusual for businesses to look for regulation but in this case, the fuel merchants feel their very survival depends on it. If there is no licensing system in place, they do not know how the products coming down from the North can be controlled.

The second recommendation is that if there is licensing in place, all fuel merchants' premises should be open to inspection.

Again, if they are open to inspection and there was illegal product on the premises, that would be seen. If the product was sourced from outside our jurisdiction, that would come to light during the inspection. That would have to bring transparency and fairness to the trade. The third request is that there would be Road Safety Authority checks on vehicles carrying fuel around the country.

At the moment, we have articulated trucks coming down from the North and couriers also with single axle lorries bringing down significant quantities of solid fuel. There are no checks at any stage on them. We need to have checks on these and if we had the licensing system in place and the inspection regime; if someone is carrying product that is not legal in this country, that would be confiscated.

If there were a number of these checks on roads around the country, we would very quickly see a reduction in illegal products coming into our jurisdiction.

As it stands, fuel merchants are facing completely unfair competition. They will not survive and will go out of business. We have seen some large fuel merchant firms announcing their closure in the past number of weeks. This is getting worse by the week where there is more and more product coming down from the Six Counties and we have to have a level playing field. The product that is sold here has to be legal and has to be subject to the same taxation regime.

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. Specifically, solid fuels being brought into this State from Northern Ireland enjoy the same freedom of movement that applies to most other goods. How can she expect a carbon tax to operate in the Twenty-six Counties if we have product coming from outside the State which is coming in and undermining business here? That just cannot be allowed to continue. The estimated figures from the fuel merchants I have for loss of revenue in 2023 is €77 million.

Leaving that aside, we will lose our complete infrastructure of fuel merchants in this country and it is happening as we speak here. They are going out of business.

The reality is, and the Minister of State has said it in her statement, that much of this product which is coming down from the North of Ireland is illegal to be sold here. An inspection regime has to be put in place. I will repeat the three requests I have. These are: fuel merchants here have to be licensed; they have to be open for inspection; and there has to be checks on product being moved from one place to the other within the State to see if the product on those trucks and lorries is legal. That has to happen immediately.

We will have more and more of this issue in the post-Brexit period where the standards in the Twenty-six Counties and the standards in the UK and in Northern Ireland will be different from our own on different products. We cannot allow the homegrown businesses in this country suffer because of that. That is what is happening at the moment. We have different standards, a different rate of taxation, and the fuel merchant businesses are being completely undermined and will become completely unviable. We must impose the same standards where product coming down from the North will most definitely have to be legal and, if it is being used in this country, it must be subject to carbon tax to ensure a level playing field for our fuel merchants here to ensure fairness. This is also to ensure that the environmental improvements which we are trying to achieve from carbon tax do actually happen.

I can inform the Deputy, that Criminal legal services are provided by private solicitors who have notified the relevant Court of their availability to undertake criminal legal aid work.  The courts, through the judiciary, are responsible for the granting of legal aid on application by the defence in court. My Department has no role in the granting of legal aid or in the appointment of solicitors to a case. The Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Act 1962 gives expression to the Constitutional right that free legal aid must be granted, in certain circumstances, for the defence of persons of insufficient means in criminal proceedings.

As per Regulation 4 of the Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Regulations 1965 (S. I. No. 12 of 1965), each County Registrar maintains a list of tax compliant solicitors who are willing to act in that county for those to whom certificates for free legal aid are granted.

My Department is responsible for the payment of fees and expenses to the legal practitioners.

The total amount of fees paid to solicitors for the years requested are laid out in Table 1 and the top 10 recipient firms are listed in Table 2

Table 1: Fees paid to solicitors for criminal legal aid work

Table 2: Fees paid to Top 10 Solicitors

The breakdown of the top ten earning solicitors is not available for 2023.

Local authorities, nevertheless, have significant powers under environmental law, namely the new solid fuel regulations, to enforce the legal provisions aimed at preventing the marketing, distribution, sale and use of smoky coal in the State. The Deputy met a delegation of solid fuel merchants. Revenue officials would be happy to meet solid fuel supplier representative bodies and would be particularly interested in gathering any information on suspected tax evasion. They always welcome any information that representative bodies, suppliers or individuals may wish to share confidentially.