James Breen (Clare, Independent)

This Bill at long last seeks to give this country a more complete energy policy and that in itself is welcome but, like the curate's egg, it is merely good in parts. The energy and fuel landscape has changed and is changing radically. The move away from a confined number of fuel supplying countries to a more expanded market and efforts to secure long-term supplies of energy need common policy with our EU partners. In that respect the Bill is welcome, but the simple truth remains that this movement has more or less passed us by owing to the inaction and lack of forward planning by the Government. Our dependence on traditional fuel supplies has increased when, all around us, warnings were given that such reserves were dwindling and that alternative energies should be sourced.

Nobody would argue against the proposal for an all-island energy market, while the need to achieve advanced interconnection with Britain and Northern Ireland is urgent. In a recent written question that I put to the Minister, I received a reply that planning for the construction of a North-South interconnector is advanced and that it could be operational by the year 2012. If this Government was serious about energy, these interconnectors would have been up and running long before now and shortly after it came to power in 1997.

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