Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I concur with Deputy Broughan. I would be happy to join him and our Fine Gael colleagues in lambasting the Government for the utter failure of its energy policy.

Yesterday, I was on radio with our beloved Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, who told us how all things were going green and swimmingly in the energy area with renewable this, that and the other. The commentator asked me was it not the case that other political parties were stealing the Green Party's clothes. Last night, thinking about it, the only image I had was of Deputy Roche standing on a Wicklow mountain on a cold and windy day, stark naked with nothing other than a fig leaf to cover his modest green credentials.

The Government has failed us in energy policy. We need no greater example of that than the presentation of yesterday's Forfás report. The report contained some examples of our dangerous energy position. IBEC has described it as an energy crisis. The Government cannot blame the rainbow Government for the situation. In 1997, when the Government came to power, Ireland had the same oil use per capita as the EU 15. In ten years, Ireland has gone to being 50% above the European average. In recent years commentators have said oil production is about to peak and a low dependent fossil fuel economy must be prepared. Despite this, Ireland's dependence on fossil fuels has risen in electricity production and transport. The Government has been a disaster for the country's energy policy.

Ireland has not had an energy policy for 20-odd years. We have had no political leadership in the energy area. Instead we have had an inadequate, timid and bureaucratic response which has failed us. I hear our bureaucrats on television saying that we have a target for 2010 and we might achieve it. That is not the long-term vision needed in energy policy. That is why the Green Party seeks a cross-party approach on the issue. We need political change in the area quickly.

The Energy (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill is simply not good enough. It is an example of that same bureaucratic, timid, inadequate and unambitious thinking. If the Green Party were in Government, the Bill would be radically amended. No one could disagree with the all-Ireland energy market but we do not know how it will work. We do not know how both regulators will engage nor how the six or seven institutions involved in the negotiations will come up with a real solution. We should be ambitious and brave in this regard, however, because we need an all-Ireland energy market.

In fact, we need a wider energy policy which recognises that we are inextricably connected to the neighbouring island. The oil and gas we have been dependent upon is depleting at approximately 10% per year. That is why we have a crisis. In addition, there is no connection to continental Europe so the gas upon which we are now inextricably dependent because of Government policy will not be secure for us. I welcome the Bill's provision for such an all-Ireland development but it is not sufficiently ambitious nor does it go far enough.

One cannot disagree with section 4 which contains the second main provision concerning electrical safety. It is a necessary mopping up of the complete lack of control which exists and which the Government seems to have been happy to oversee for the past ten years. As long as the Celtic tiger was booming and buildings were being erected, who cared about the standards involved? Who was checking the building standards, including electrical installations? Who cared if the work was undertaken by subcontractors who were not properly registered? The Government did not care for the past ten years and neither does it care now. If this provision in some way compensates for that lack of concern for what is built, then I welcome it.

Section 5 deals with combined heat and power. One could not get a better example of the disaster concerning the implementation of what is required than our utter failure to develop proper amounts of CHP. The gas we are dependent upon from the North Sea and from our dwindling Kinsale field is a precious, finite resource which is being depleted. It makes no sense whatsoever to burn it in a power station and dispense one third of it as heat into the air. That is of no value to the people. It would make much more sense to use the remaining gas we have in a highly efficient and intelligent manner to produce both heat and power in the one source and thereby obtain approximately 80% or 90% efficiency, rather than 30% to 40% as at present. We have done nothing in that regard, however. We have failed utterly, as the European Commission recognised in its damning indictment by the action it is taking against the Government for its failure to develop renewable power.

Section 6 deals with policy directions, which have been missing. The regulated model has not worked because a regulator or bureaucrat based in the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources or the Commission for Energy Regulation cannot take on the political responsibility to lead. Such a person cannot take decisions or say something awkward, difficult or risky. In our democratic system, only politicians have the power to do that. We have had no leadership from the top down. I blame the Taoiseach personally for that. We know this Government will do nothing about market dominance in the next 18 months for fear of scaring a union in advance of a general election.

We know the Government, ultimately from the Taoiseach downwards, is looking after developers' interests. As long as we are building and have power for the moment, who cares about tomorrow? That is the ethos one gets from the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, down. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, did nothing about energy in his former portfolio of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources. The current Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, is too busy looking after fish and broadband wires to think about energy.

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