Mr. Eamon Ryan: I concur with Deputy Broughan.? I would be happy to join him and our Fine Gael colleagues in lambasting the Government for the utter failure of its energy policy.
Yesterday, I was on radio with our beloved Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, who told us how all things were going green and swimmingly in the energy area with renewable this, that and the other.? The commentator asked me was it not the case that other political parties were stealing the Green Party’s clothes.? Last night, thinking about it, the only image I had was of Deputy Roche standing on a Wicklow mountain on a cold and windy day, stark naked with nothing other than a fig leaf to cover his modest green credentials.
The Government has failed us in energy policy.? We need no greater example of that than the presentation of yesterday’s Forf?s report.? The report contained some examples of our dangerous energy position.? IBEC has described it as an energy crisis.? The Government cannot blame the rainbow Government for the situation.? In 1997, when the Government came to power, Ireland had the same oil use per capita as the EU-15.? In ten years, Ireland is 50% above the European average.? In the past several years commentators have said oil production is about to peak and a low dependent fossil fuel economy must be prepared.? Yet Ireland’s dependence on fossil fuels has risen in electricity production and transport.? The Government has been a disaster for the country’s energy policy.
Ireland has not had an energy policy for 20 odd years.? We have had no political leadership in the energy area.? Instead we have had an inadequate, timid and bureaucratic response which has failed us.? I hear our bureaucrats on television saying that we have a target for 2010 and we might achieve it.? That is not the long-term vision needed in energy policy.? That is why the Green Party seeks a cross-party approach on the issue.? We need political change in the area fast.
The Energy (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill is simply not good enough.? It is an example of that same bureaucratic, timid, inadequate and unambitious thinking.? If the Green Party were in Government, the Bill would be radically amended. ?No one could disagree with the All-Ireland energy market but we do not know how it will work.? We do not know how both regulators will engage, nor how the six or seven institutions involved in the negotiations will come up with a real solution.? We should be ambitious and brave in this regard, however, because we need an all-Ireland energy market.? In fact, we need a wider energy policy which recognises that we are inextricably connected to the neighbouring island.? The oil and gas we have been dependent upon is depleting at approximately 10% per year.? That is why we have a crisis.? In addition, there is no connection to continental Europe so the gas upon which we are now inextricably dependent because of Government policy, will not be secure for us.? I welcome the Bill’s provision for such an all-Ireland development but it is not sufficiently ambitious, nor does it go far enough.
One cannot disagree with section 4 which contains the second main provision concerning electrical safety.? It is a necessary mopping up of the complete lack of control which currently exists and which the Government seems to have been happy to oversee for the past ten years.? As long as the Celtic tiger was booming and buildings were being erected, who cared about the standards involved?? Who was checking the building standards, including electrical installations?? Who cared if the work was undertaken by sub-contractors who were not properly registered?? The Government did not care for the past ten years and neither does it care now.? If this provision in some way compensates for that lack of concern for what is built, then I welcome it.
Section 5 deals with CHP.? One could not get a better example of the disaster concerning the implementation of what is required than our utter failure to develop proper amounts of CHP.
The gas we are dependent upon from the North Sea and from our dwindling Kinsale field is a precious, finite resource which is being depleted.? It makes no sense whatsoever to burn it in a power station and dispense one third of it as heat into the air.? That is of no value to the Irish people. ?It would make far more sense to use the remaining gas we have in a highly efficient and intelligent manner to produce both heat and power in the one source and thereby obtain approximately 80% or 90% efficiency, rather than 30% to 40% as at present.? We have done nothing in that regard, however.? We have failed utterly, as the European Commission recognised in its damning indictment by the action it is taking against the Government for its failure to develop renewable power.
Section 6 deals with policy directions, which have been missing.? The regulated model has not worked because a regulator or bureaucrat based in the Department or the CER cannot take on the political responsibility to lead.? Such a person cannot take decisions or say something awkward, difficult or risky.? In our democratic system, only politicians have the power to do that.? We have had no leadership from the top down.? I blame the Taoiseach personally for that.? We know this Government will do nothing about market dominance in the next 18 months for fear of scaring a union in advance of an election.
We know the Government, ultimately from the Taoiseach downwards, is looking after developers’ interests.? As long as we are building and have power for the moment, who cares about tomorrow?? That is the ethos one gets from the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, down.? Deputy Dermot Ahern did nothing about energy in his former portfolio of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources.? The current Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, is too busy looking after fish and broadband wires to think about energy.
?? Mr. Durkan: And the electronic ballot boxes.
?? Mr. Eamon Ryan: We need policy directions from the CER and the Department, which recognise the crisis we are in.
Section 7 concerns interconnection and there could be no better example of the incompetence and delay that has occurred in this regard.? Just about everyone agrees that we need an interconnector.? We have gone around the houses as regards whether it should be a merger or built project but no one knows.? No one has made a decision and the dawdling has been going on for about three years and is still continuing.? People say, “We’ll get a 500 MW interconnector first and then we’ll think about a second one”.? We need two interconnectors now.? It is a hugely important infrastructure, although not for the reasons Forf?s seems to believe.? We have a State agency which says, “We need nuclear power so we will buy it off the English and ship it in” or “We’re going to build our own nuclear power and ship it out”.? That is not why I want an interconnector.? I do not believe the logic that Forf?s is coming out with, which is that – recognising that we have a transport disaster with depleting oil reserves – we need nuclear energy to power electric rail lines.? Forf?s is saying we need nuclear power.? Will someone tell the Minister for Transport that we need electric railways?? Do we have to build a nuclear power facility to run our public transport system?? I do not think so.? It is not justified and it is not clever long-term thinking.? Purely on energy grounds it does not make sense to go nuclear but we do need interconnectors for the alternative vision.? That comprises an interconnected European grid connecting up the offshore wind farms in whose raw material we are abundantly rich.? Both interconnectors could feed power back into Europe.? That is why we need such a decision today rather than tomorrow.
I heard an official from the Department state the other day that such long-term wind projects are for the future, but they should be for today.? Until we start getting that urgency into energy policy thinking we will be going nowhere.
Section 8 deals with emergency provisions.? Deputy Broughan is right in saying that we need to consider oil as well.? Oil and gas are interconnectable so, as a regulator, the CER should examine the whole energy area.
Section 10 concerns the national gas supply.? We have a problem in that at European level there is no fluidity in the European gas market on which we are utterly dependent.? We are becoming more dependent on it.? All the regulator can say is that rather than developing CHP, which would provide a multitude of small CHP sources, we are going the same old way, which the boys in the ESB think is the right thing to do – the big 400 MW power plants.? They say that is the way the Westinghouse lads do it, so it must the right way but I am afraid it is not.? It is leading us to a dependence on gas although we are at the very end of the pipeline.? We need to be active at European level but the Minister did not even turn up to the European Council meeting on this issue.? He was in Sacramento with the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
?? Mr. Broughan: He was with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
?? Mr. Eamon Ryan: That was ridiculous.? This is the most important Council meeting we have had, yet the Minister was drinking shamrock drinks somewhere on the west coast of America.
?? Mr. Durkan: Nice drink, though.
?? Mr. Eamon Ryan: That shows how much the Government lacks a sense of urgency about this crucial issue.
The Bill contains a proposal concerning the ESB’s shareholding.? I will be tabling an amendment in this regard.? I have many things to say about the ESB but first and foremost, the obvious one – the one the EU Commissioner will probably be telling the Minister about shortly by way of a legal notice – is that we need to unbundle the transmission grid from power generation and the supply company.? Why is the Minister presenting this Bill but not making that obvious, urgent, immediate and uncontroversial change?? That is an example of the lack of any vision in this Government.? It is an example of the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, saying “Right lads, whatever you do, don’t rock the boat.? Don’t do anything controversial”. That is an example of why this Bill is not worth the paper it is written on.? It does not give a sense of urgency to the Irish people about what needs to be done in this vital area.
