Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I will deal with that in more detail in a minute. There are some contradictions which are of great concern to me and which were referred to by a number of other people. We will come to those in a moment.

I want to discuss matters for which I have responsibility — energy and communications. I do not know what has gone wrong in the communications area. The Government's delivery of modern telecommunications is miles short of what it promised. The Finance Bill and the budget contain nothing to improve on it. Utility services now take the place of financial investment houses. Anyone who wants to make money should be advised to buy either a toll road or a telecommunications sector. Therein lies the secret of making much more money by way of dividend than can be made by investment in any financial house.

I will ask the much-vaunted two parties in Government, which have such great policies, a question regarding a comparison with other European countries in telecommunications areas such as broadband and developing state-of-the-art technology. Ten years ago this country was one of the leading five countries in Europe in those areas. We are now in the last two and falling rapidly. Some countries in Europe which have only barely come on stage in these issues are well ahead of us and rapidly going out of sight. Despite all of the ingenuity congregated between the combined masses of intelligence of the two parties in Government, they have failed miserably in this area. They will fail even further. Not only do they fail themselves, they fail to deliver on promises and projections and they fail the people and this economy. No area has more influence on a developing economy at present than the telecommunications area.

I will now speak on energy. It is true that in this budget the Minister made some concessions in the area of excise duty on renewable oils and that is welcome. However, why in heaven's name did it take so long? How did this Government with such massive foresight and, according to itself, the confidence of all the people miss that until now? Why did it not recognise that to develop a proper energy policy, adequate research and development is required, all of which has been and still is being sadly neglected?

Despite the manifestations from the other side of the House, nothing has happened that will in any way bolster the people's or industry's confidence in continuity and security of supply. We know from last week and the week before that in a few moments people ran scared because of difficulties with the supply of gas from Russia. Our economy depends heavily on energy and will depend on it to a much greater extent in years to come. It is an appalling indictment of the Government and an example of its inaction and inability to read the signs before it that so little has been done for so long. It should know that this area is fundamental to the development of the economy.

Far from being a case of a lot done and more to do, it is all to do and the Government has done nothing so far. As for buying credits for carbon emissions, I do not know whether the Government realises that the millions set aside for that purpose do not do anything for the atmosphere or the ozone layer. While members of the Government might feel reassured when they go home at the weekend that they have done something for the environment, they have in fact done nothing for it. They spend €20 million buying credits from elsewhere which does nothing for the atmosphere.

I wish to discuss a few other areas. Much has been said about the need for carers for older people and for their importance to be recognised. It is important to have adequate carers to cater for the ageing population given that we live in a society where both partners in a relationship must work because it is otherwise no longer possible to pay a mortgage. The Government can take full credit for that. It increased house prices tenfold during the past seven or eight years. Members of the Government should be ashamed of themselves. It has already been indicated and it never shows up on the consumer price index because it was never intended to show up that way. The real inflation rate has never been tapped into. Nobody has recognised it and I give the Government full credit for it. The Government conned the people and it did so effectively.

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