Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

In support of what my party leader just said, I draw the attention of the House to the following points I wish to make, which come within the context of the agreed budget. I ask the Taoiseach and his colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, whether they could address their minds to them. We have certainty until 2013, which is not far away. I am glad the Taoiseach stated on more that one occasion that it is one matter to review expenditure between now and 2013 but that it is quite another to suggest that it would change mid-stream. The Labour Party would fully support any Irish Government on that position. The action taken by the British Presidency in that regard was foolhardy and brought down upon the Presidency unnecessary pressure from which it had to escape.

There are two elephants in the room regarding our position. The first is Europe's extraordinary fragility regarding independent energy supply, as was witnessed in the Ukraine and Georgia. We are now effectively a gas importer and are more dependent on external gas for our energy supplies than was the case 15 or 20 years ago. The fragility of that supply is highlighted in recent history. I refer here to the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and the oil crisis emanating out of Iran in 1979. The lessons of history are still memory for many of us, as is the havoc wreaked in the Irish economy at the time. I still recall the effect on the building industry. We are now doubly dependent on our construction industry and our exposure is all the more acute.

We must start planning for a proper energy policy at both European and national level. There is no contradiction here. I ask the Taoiseach, in his discussions with the Cabinet, to invite the Minister for Finance to re-examine financial incentives to fast track and improve sustainable energy creation in Ireland. The Taoiseach is aware of the current stalemate. Nothing is happening with regard to wind energy, which is one of the few areas where we could have significant energy capacity. That must be dealt with against the background of the uncertainty I described.

The second matter I wish to raise is the sustainability of rural Ireland. The Common Agricultural Policy is coming to an end in real terms, relative to what it was back in 1973 when we joined the European Union. The face of rural Ireland will be utterly and totally transformed. We already had a insight into what will happen to agriculture with the Agri-Vision report and the Foresight report, which was recently referred to in the newspapers.

Instead of trying to get the best compensation deal for the 3,500 or 3,800 tillage farmers in this country so they would be permanently off the land, we should examine how we can take their expertise and tradition from the 80 year old beet growing industry and see in what way can that land and those skills be used to start to grow the biomass that would be a part, albeit small, of sustainable energy. What will we do with Bord na Móna's landmass? In another 15 years, which is as far in the future as 1991 is in the past — the Taoiseach and I remember quite clearly what we did in 1991 — we will have a landmass the size of the Minister for Foreign Affair's constituency county of Louth in public ownership, drained, cleared and available for the type of prairie production of biomass on a scale that rural Ireland has never before seen. If we do not start considering these issues now, against the background of certainty that the budget deal created for the CIP, future generations will hold us to account and state that we wasted a golden opportunity of high prosperity in Ireland to give us a measure of sustainability and energy independence which we do not have at present.

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