Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

They are big questions. Many energy resources, including nuclear power and renewables, raise significant public policy concerns which are shared by the general public, not just by policy makers. The Senator's comments are well made.

If we want to diversify away from our dependence on fossil fuels, we must identify the sources of energy we intend to pursue and develop a strategy for delivering on that objective. We have seen that debate taking placing very intensively in recent months in respect of renewables. The building out of the network is necessary if we are to have interconnection and develop our renewables capacity. I do not dispute that there are public policy issues for the European Union to tackle. We need to balance the interests of industry and employment with other interests that are genuinely held by many people. We have a legal framework within which to do this. I share the Senator's view that we need to be able to move forward in areas in which we identify opportunities.

On the question of what is being talked about in the broad area of energy, the focus is on energy efficiency, new technologies and better monitoring and control of energy use. These are areas in which we can genuinely make gains. If we have a smart infrastructure, smart generation capacity, smart homes and smart industrial and commercial premises, there is the potential to achieve significant energy cost savings, irrespective of the primary energy source. Much of the emphasis is on that aspect at this time. There is also the issue of integrating markets in order that the European Union as a unit can be effective in harnessing competitive advantages.

In regard to digital marketing, a number of directives are at various stages of implementation. The directive on alternative dispute resolution in respect of online trading, for example, has gone through. There is a host of directives under negotiation on issues such as e-signatures and data protection, all of which are necessary to facilitate transactions across boundaries. There is also a monitoring aspect which allows one to look at where Ireland or any other member state stacks up in rolling out its infrastructure and in terms of its usage of the digital marketplace, the number of SMEs that have bought into it and so on. We are somewhere in the middle which, for a small open economy, is not good enough. Only 23% of Irish SMEs trade online, which is far too low for a country of our size. It is one of the issues we identified last year and we have developed several pilot projects to support businesses to get online. The local enterprise offices have been involved in that area. In addition, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources is working to design a competitive voucher scheme that will support successful applicants to develop their online strategy.

I am not an expert on food labelling, but Origin Green seems to be a very useful initiative which focuses on the notion of traceability from farm to fork. It is something I have seen in action on the Senator's supermarket shelves during the years. It is about offering assurance regarding how production is delivered all along the line, which is really the main selling tool for Irish food. The downside of the "made in Ireland" approach for a small trading economy is that one is likely to lose out when competing in markets where the preference is for products made in France, the United States and so on. The Origin Green initiative, on the other hand, is about the way in which the product is produced - grass-fed beef, for instance - and is, therefore, a much more robust tool. The issue of including information on fat and sugar content, etc. on labels is a public health issue, as opposed to a marketing consideration.