Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The point I made at the outset is not a minor one; it goes to the core of the issue. There was an OECD review of regulators and, by and large, the CRU came out with flying colours. My experience, as a former Minister, is that one cannot act as a regulator if one does not take the environment into account as well as public safety. If the legislation is at fault in this regard, then we must amend it. One cannot act a regulator where one states that one is only an economic regulator and that one does not look at the environment. That has to be one of the most valuable lessons of this process. How would the regulator know what we are to do in respect of the climate? If anything, in that three-way process, the environment comes first because the one physical certainty we know about is that we must stop putting carbon in the atmosphere whereas competitiveness or security can be devised in a range of different ways. To discount the environment and state that one is only an economic regulator, is a valuable lesson out of what has come out today. I do not see how a regulator can do its job if it is coming at the matter in that way.