Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

In the Minister's speech, one of the programmes mentioned includes advice to businesses, including energy audits of commercial premises. These advice services help businesses save approximately 20% of their energy costs and are a significant contributor to our efforts to reduce energy demand in the economy. I fully support such practices and Sustainable Energy Ireland should engage in more of such activity because there is a dual benefit: we save energy while becoming more efficient. I asked a question yesterday on the tourism industry and how such advice can be expanded to assist hotels to save energy. The reply stated that 50 Irish hotels are engaged in this practice. If I was running a business and someone told me that if I follow a certain practice, I will save 20% of my energy costs, I would be happy to pay a fee for such advice. In this Estimate however, the Minister seeks a further €500,000 from now to the end of the year to fund a service that is helping business while helping energy conservation. We seem to have gone mad in granting aid to people to help them to save money in their businesses. By all means give them the service but sometimes we should ask people to contribute for this service.

Likewise, we are going to provide another €5 million to encourage developers to produce model houses to save energy. The last people who need assistance are developers. We have gone mad. To do things that will help us all, particularly the person buying the house, we are paying grants to developers to develop a model of a house that will save the purchaser money. The last people who need grant assistance from the State are developers. These people have made an absolute fortune at the expense of first-time house buyers in particular. We are on a merry-go-round, with a valuable organisation like Sustainable Energy Ireland engaging in every grant we can think of instead of building an advice system to help people save money in their businesses, make Ireland more competitive and reduce emissions.

I support the other speakers on what has been said about taking money from the introduction of a national broadband scheme. It is a scandal.

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