Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I support the amendment. It is in accord with many of our statements, particularly my statements on the independence of EirGrid. It should be independent not only in spirit but also in the letter to the extent that State control must be solidified so as not to end up in a similar position to the telecommunications sector where a monopoly exists. This is not in any way disrespectful to the ESB. It would purely and simply strengthen the whole concept of deregulation, with consequential benefit to the consumer, be they industrial or domestic. We must go that one step further. As Deputy Eamon Ryan has suggested, the more independent EirGrid is, the better. The Minister will probably ask how much more independent the body could be. There should be no relationship and it should be absolutely independent. It should be an entity on its own, having no roots or relationship with its former parent body, for want of a better description.

There are benefits to encouraging new entrants to the market, which is most important. Even if EirGrid is independent in the oldest sense of the word, there will be a certain suspicion among those who want access to the grid that the playing field is perhaps not level. It must be not only level, but seen to be so. It must be of such a nature as to be quite clear.

The grid has a number of jobs to do. It must guarantee security of supply, which is becoming more intricate as time goes by, as we have seen from the events on mainland Europe in the past couple of weeks. I would be very interested to know the Minister's feelings on the role of deregulation, and how effective it is and was in Europe over the past couple of weeks. Did it work all that well and are improvements necessary? To my mind, particularly as legislation comes from Europe in the first instance, it is less than amusing to note what has happened in the past couple of weeks. It is not the first time such an occurrence has come about — there has been a major outage on the European mainland before. Two years ago in the middle of summer, as a result of excessive use of air conditioning, there were major outages across Spain and Italy. These countries have been subject to deregulation and use the European grid.

As we are an island nation, we must treat the matter much more seriously than others. The integrity and independence of the grid is important. We should include the amendment to encourage the maximum number of participants into the marketplace of providing electricity and to ensure the grid is totally independent and capable of making decisions in the interests of the State. It will not necessarily play to the gallery. The amendment is well formulated.

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