Seymour Crawford (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to say a few words about this very important legislation. Some of us possibly did not realise how serious this issue was, but it is clearly emerging as one of the major issues in world affairs. I suppose those who saw the recent film, "An Inconvenient Truth", produced by the former US vice president, Al Gore, realise just how serious the issue is. I enjoyed the fact that at the start of his speech, the Minister said that what is being done is not interfering with growth. Some of the developments that have taken place in agriculture, such as those relating to the nitrates directive and other issues, will, in the long term, certainly be proved to have created major problems as far as growth is concerned. If ever there was a case where this Government mishandled the situation, this is one that will prove in the future that more thought needs to be put into these matters, which should and must be dealt with in time. Time will prove that procrastination certainly cost the farming community and industry enormous potential for the future.

Fine Gael policy on this issue is very clear. We will legislate in Government to compel all fuel retailers to blend bio-fuel with fuels such as petrol, diesel and home heating oil. We would remove all excise duty on bio-fuel products from renewable energy crops. In practice, this would mean that producers would not have to pay excise duty on bio-fuels, the knock-on effect being that consumers would enjoy cheaper fuel at the pumps.

In that context, I, as a member of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, visited Scotland in the not too distant past to look at its efforts to produce alternative fuels. On Monday of this week, we travelled to Donegal to see some wind farms. We also visited the farm of John Gilliland, the former president of the Ulster Farmers' Union. Our visit to Mr. Gilliland's farm, which has been turned over to bioenergy, was eye-opening. The personnel who showed us round are obviously very enthusiastic about this issue. Mr. Gilliland told us that he and others had lobbied our Minister, who is from Donegal and to whom he has easy access as Donegal is just across the ditch from Derry, to bring in the proposals for planting this year's crop of bio-fuel or alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, this was not announced until last week when there are only a few days left to make decisions on it. As a result, thousands of acres, and in Mr. Gilliland's case, possibly approximately 3,000 acres, will not be planted this year when they could have been planted if the proper strategy had been used.

We can all talk about these things, but unless we do them in a proper, constructive way, it will certainly not happen. I heard the Minister's colleague, Deputy Cregan, talk about forestry. I remember when there was no money in this country or, at least, when we were only getting off our knees. In 1996, we planted 25,000 hectares, but we are only planting about half of this.

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