Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I am talking about the haulage people. We have the eighth cheapest priced diesel in the European Union. We will not serve those people well by addressing a long-term problem with a short-term solution which will not have any material effect in the long run. We are far better investing any resources we have in providing a long-term solution to what is a long-term problem.

I return to what I said earlier. The crucial issue is that we identify to the Irish people and provide real clarity as to the scale of the challenge and problem we face. A total of 60% of our energy comes from imported oil. We do not have any oil ourselves and we are not likely to have any in the next 20 years. The majority of our oil will come from the Middle East where we do not have a secure future supply. We are exposed. The response to that exposure cannot be to pretend that it is just a short-term problem and that if we reduced our tax by 1%, which would probably be gobbled up by the market anyway, we would solve the problem. We would not. We need to make fundamental changes in everything we do to address that long-term fundamental problem.

Bio-fuels represent one of the answers. One of the greatest frustrations for companies who want to get into this area has been that the tax-exempt scheme was a competitive scheme which left a lot of companies — of the kind the Deputy referred to — outside the process. They did not win in the competition, therefore they could not develop anything. They could not get the excise duty exemption. The key attraction of an obligation scheme is that it does not provide such a restriction; it is an open door to anyone who can make an economic and, crucially, a sustainable case for their production. Then there is no impediment to them in developing fuels.

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