A member of the Climate Change Advisory Council has said the government "has to" go ahead with a planned increase to the carbon tax.
Professor Peter Thorne of Maynooth University was speaking on Saturday with Cormac Ó hEadhra on RTÉ Radio 1.
He said that the increase planned for 1 May - from €63.50 per tonne of fuel to €71 per tonne - has to go ahead because if it doesn't, the country could face a higher tax from Europe. Carbon tax on diesel and petrol already increased to €71 per tonne following last October's budget.
"The Government has to go ahead with this, primarily because if it doesn't, we will lose the derogation on the new ETS2, Emissions Trading Scheme 2, [and] that will mean that rather than paying the carbon tax, you would be paying a tax to Brussels".
Prof Thorne said that that scheme goes live from the 1 January.
He said you would pay the carbon tax on a national level or be "at the whim" of ETS2 , which he said would be "highly fluctuating".
"Rather than having certainty, you'd have huge economic uncertainty", he said.
Professor Thorne said that the carbon tax is one of our most "redistributed taxes", a huge portion of which is ringfenced, and helps to pay for things like the fuel allowance, retrofitting of social housing, SEAI retrofitting grants and the ACRES biodiversity scheme.
Sinn Féin's Matt Carthy, speaking on the same programme, said the carbon tax put additional pressure on people and that in the context of the cost of living crisis and the recent fuel hikes, "to suggest they would be penalised further is absolutely nonsensical".
Jennifer Whitmore of the Social Democrats said that she agreed that people are suffering, but that excise on fuel is what Government should be looking at.
She also called for the government to "get on top of the price gouging that is going on", not just on service station forecourts, but also in relation to the electricity market.
