Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)

In the Agri-Vision 2015 report published earlier this year by my Department, we emphasised the factors that have to be taken into consideration in the development of the food industry and they include the increasing cost of oil, the volatility of oil supply and the need to reduce emissions. Over the past 18 months, the Minister for Agriculture and Food and I have met different people involved in the food industry and they have, understandably, repeatedly raised the cost of energy issue with us.

My constituency, which I share with Deputy Crawford, has embraced wind energy generation. Deputy Sargent will recall visiting my parish between Bawnboy and Ballyconnell in August 2001 for the opening of a wind farm. In the meantime, significant development has taken place in my own county in this area. The Minister is a member of the Cabinet task force, which has placed a major emphasis on the need to generate alternative energy sources. The Green Paper is ambitious and practical and it lays out a framework to reduce our dependence on current energy sources. At the same time, we will ensure incentives on both the supply and demand sides. The Government has invited submissions on the Green Paper and it is proposed that the national bioenergy strategy and the White Paper on energy policy will be published by the end of the year. The Government has asked individual organisations to submit their proposals on the Green Paper. A five-year excise relief programme, valued at €200 million, is under way. A capital grant aid programme for bioenergy development will be introduced while a bioheat grants programme provides grants for commercial scale wood biomass boilers. We also envisage the establishment of the single electricity market in 2007 and the completion of the North-South gas interconnector project by 2011.

On the recent visit by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel, to Ireland, both the Minister and I raised the need to give greater incentives to farmers who want to diversify into the cultivation of energy crops. We are providing capital grant assistance towards harvesting equipment as well. There is a need for further incentives both on the supply and demand sides and we want to encourage more farmers to go into this form of crop production. I attended a meeting organised by Teagasc on the Leader programme in my own county a few weeks ago. I initiated the meeting, which was attended by 250 farmers who expressed an interest in this new form of farming. There is widespread interest but we must ensure we capitalise on it while, at the same time, ensuring the incentives are sufficient to generate business in this new form of farming.

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