Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

We have been told that bigger, wider roads will give us more cars, as has happened everywhere else, and we need to counterbalance that with public transport, but we ignore that saying it will not happen here. When it happens, we try to resolve it. That approach seems to be almost a national pastime. We need to plan for a crisis but I see no evidence of that happening.

An article in The Independent in the United Kingdom last January referred to what "they" do not want us to know about the coming oil crisis, namely, soaring fuel prices, rumours of winter power cuts, panic over gas supply from Russia, and abrupt changes to forecasts of crude output because the reserves seem to be understated. The writer of the article asked whether there was something sinister going on. Not long afterwards the British Government announced a public inquiry into the country's energy situation. It has recognised that its oil and gas production from the North Sea is in steep decline and facing depletion and it is starting to plan for this.

We also need to recognise what is happening elsewhere and how exposed and dependent we are, and to start planning. In ten years' time when someone asks what we were doing in 2006 when this was predictable, let us not say that we were talking about institutional arrangements and other matters instead of dealing with the fundamental issue of supply. We need to deal with that issue.

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