MAKING the polluter pay for the wider costs of the environmental damage they cause makes eminent sense. It also forms part of the Government's own strategy for "sustainable development", published last month by the Minister for the Environment.
Now it has received a powerful endorsement from the Economic and Social Research Institute, the public sector's principal "think tank", in a major report which recommends a broad range of fiscal measures aimed at putting flesh on the polluter pays principle.
As things stand, it notes, polluting activities are actually subsidised either directly, through tax breaks and grants, or indirectly, where existing taxes or charges do not cover environmental costs.
In his 1996 budget, as the ESRI report recalls, the Minister for Finance requested Departments and other State agencies to "examine the strategic impact of taxation on environmental policy and to bring forward specific tax measures for the 1997 budget".
However, efforts by the Department of the Environment to advance the cause of "green taxation" ran into entrenched opposition from the Department of Finance - the Mandarins of Merrion Street - and this year's Budget contained not a jot in this area.
Although Finance would at least nominally have signed up to the sustainable development strategy, a superhuman effort will be required to change the mind set of its senior civil servants and convince them that imposing green taxes really does make sense.
However, the mandarins remain concerned that such measures would have an inflationary effect at a time when Ireland must adhere to the Maastricht guidelines to qualify for the EU single currency. They also want to protect the competitiveness of Irish industry.
If they did not listen too closely to their colleagues in Environment, perhaps they will have to take on board the argument advanced by fellow economists at the ESRI that taxes, charges and subsidies should be used as incentives to safeguard the environment.
The authors of the ESRI report calculate that an across the board energy tax would raise nearly £700 million a year, even after providing subsidies to low income households, and they say this revenue could be used to fund reductions in other areas of taxation.
Some time ago, indeed, the ESRI pointed out there would be a net gain to the economy and to industry, in particular, if the revenue from a carbon tax - designed to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions causing climate change - was used to cut PRSI.
The mandarins did not listen then. But the force of the argument made in the latest ESRI report, as well as the explicit commitment contained in the Government's strategy for sustainable development, makes it almost inevitable that green taxes will feature in the next budget.