Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I am glad to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate on this Bill. We have been requesting it for some considerable time on foot of general concerns over fuel and energy over the past 12 months. It has had a longer gestation than we expected, but I am glad it has finally emerged. We welcome it without any shadow of doubt because it gives us an opportunity to talk about the issue with which it is supposed to deal, that is, the availability of vital fuel supplies, especially in a changing world. Political and environmental changes often have an impact on fuel supplies and, consequently, on energy supply. The Bill highlights our need to comply with international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, examine the issue of carbon trading and determine its likely cost. We must evaluate the benefit of taking fundamental decisions on the development of our future energy policy.

The Minister of State referred to a medium-term energy policy, but if there had been a serious problem in the past six months, there would have been no sense in such a policy. The response would have had to have been immediate. Three plans are always needed and they need to dovetail into one another. One needs a short-term plan at all times for emergencies and it is not sufficient to say a plan will be created when the filling stations run out of fuel. That is too late because one must provide for alternatives in the short term. One must also have a medium-term plan — the Minister of State is correct in this regard — and a long-term plan. One grows into the other and, as a result of having them, there will be greater security of supply. Security of supply is an issue causing much concern in this country at present and the more our economy develops, the more important it will become.

The Bill merely updates and refurbishes existing legislation and puts some emphasis on the needs of today's world. I am a little concerned about access to stocks of fuel that might be stored outside the jurisdiction. The Minister of State referred to international agreements and the requirement to have a reserve that would last for 90 days. In emergencies, however, it may not always be possible for an island nation to obtain access to the stocks on which we rely, notwithstanding international agreements. When replying to the debate, I hope the Minister of State will reassure the House that whatever stocks are available, be they a three-month, 90-day or 108-day supply safeguard, it will be possible to access them at all times and that no country will review their international agreements and say that because they have a problem their supply safeguard will be reviewed and changed to 80 days, 70 days or whatever.

The next area we must examine is energy because we rightly talk about dependency on oil and various forms of energy in the future. It is timely that the European Commission and the Irish Government has done so but I would have thought that would have happened four or five years ago and that more plans would have been put in place. At least we are doing something about it now.

What happens from now on is important for a number of reasons. We recognise that our economy will continue to grow at its current rate. In those circumstances, it is likely that the demand for oil and various forms of energy will grow. What do we do about that? The obvious answer is to opt for renewables in so far as we can. It is not possible to do it in every case but they can dramatically reduce the impact in terms of the importation of fuels into this economy, with its associated costs. No fuel, regardless of where it comes from, is free. Nothing is free. We will have to pay for it but the degree to which we depend on imports can be reduced considerably by virtue of developing the alternatives, which come from a number of sources. Incidentally, all fuel is not necessarily road fuel. We can do little about road haulage costs unless we develop a new rail system.

See this speech in context