Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

All joking aside, Saudi Arabia experienced great wealth from oil but everyone is now saying we have reached peak oil point and it is now making its slow but inevitable exit from the energy market to be replaced by something else. If oil had not reached that point, however, there would still be a moral imperative to pursue renewable energy.

We have been here before. The oil price crisis in the 1970s saw huge amounts invested in renewable energy and quite a few people had their fingers burnt at that time. Many said they would never go near the area again and that it was a total waste of money. Since the 1970s things have changed. In the past year the price of oil has risen from $40 a barrel to $70 a barrel. Even when it was $40 a barrel, the cost of production of renewable energy was closing the gap in terms of efficiency. It is now attracting venture capital from the major energy companies such as BP and Shell, which are investing huge amounts of money in renewable energy. It no longer requires baby-sitting by Government regulation, it is attracting private investors who have seen the closing of the gap in technology and who have learned the lessons of the 1970s.

The unusual individual nature of the renewable energy sources, such as the variability in delivery of solar power because of cloud cover and the variable nature of wind power, caused problems in the past. There are now smart solar metres which charge on the basis of time of delivery and there has been growth in the size of wind turbines, steps forward since the 1970s. This technology is closing the gap, along with Government regulation and oil price rises.

Ireland faces a challenge. We are blocked by our NIMBY outlook, something of which we are all guilty. These changes are necessary. The planning and infrastructure Bill will fast-track some of the more important gas and oil projects that must be developed while we develop renewable energies.

The debate today has also touched on nuclear energy, particularly since the British announced their intention to expand their nuclear programme. Deputy Kelleher noted that we use electricity that comes from a grid fuelled by nuclear energy and asked if it is not the height of hypocrisy if we object to it on a moral basis. France has around 60 nuclear power stations and would not survive without nuclear energy. It is not far enough away that we would be immune to a terrorist attack on a nuclear facility there. The fall-out from Chernobyl in 1996 severely affected countries as far away from the Ukraine as Sweden. The threat from Britain is greater but the threat from nuclear power in other countries will not go away. We must consider that and see if we are posturing about this issue.

The same could be said about incinerators. Whatever the challenges about building incinerators around Ireland, trying to deliver a thermonuclear reactor in a constituency would be nearly impossible.

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