Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleague, Deputy Varadkar, for proposing this motion. It is timely to debate competitiveness in budget week. It is dawning on many people around the country that Ireland needs to change its expenditure emphasis to ensure better value for money, as well as having more transparency on how and where it is spent. In that way Ireland will become a more competitive place in which to do business. I hope this motion will help to dispel the myth that the Government has a steady and responsible hand on the economy. One could pick any one of six or seven sectors where we have performed poorly. We have become sloppy in terms of taking prosperity and jobs for granted at a time when we should have been investing in the future. That would have ensured the kind of rapid growth from which we benefited over the last ten years was used to invest in the future when times may not be so easy.

I wish to concentrate on two areas for which the Government has significant responsibility but has not performed well. The first is the energy sector. Between 2002 and 2007, industrial electricity prices in Ireland increased by 52%, which compares poorly to international trends. Across the EU 15, which is the only fair measurement, the figure is 40%, while it is 46% in the UK. The price of electricity in Ireland has gone from 15% below the EU average in 1996 to 13% above it in 2006. Inflation in electricity costs here averaged 5.1% per year over the decade to 2006, compared to an EU average of 1.85%. While we have invested much in trying to create a competitive market for electricity, we have not managed to get the benefit from competition in that market. That situation has been managed by regulation, which is controlled by the Government. To sum up the difference between Ireland and similar market places, the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour for medium-sized enterprises here is €10.47 compared to €6.96 in London and €4 in Boston. Those figures are from January 2007, but I suspect they have not improved since then.

Whenever fuel and power costs rise, the Government throws its hands in the air and says it can do nothing about the situation because it is dependent on international oil and gas prices. The Government says its hands are tied but other economies have managed to take action despite being similarly affected by fuel price increases. It is because of the Government's lack of management of our energy and fuel mix and our over-reliance on fossil fuels that Ireland has become over-exposed to dramatic increases in fossil fuel prices.

Irrespective of international trends in the price of fossil fuels, we have no excuse, in a time of plenty, for not investing with a view to increasing broadband availability and speed. The figures of Ireland's performance in this regard are disgraceful. Our current broadband penetration is 15.4% of the population. This compares to the OECD average of 18.8% and places Ireland 22nd out of 30 countries. Our broadband penetration is also well below the EU average of 18.2%. The Minister has attempted consistently to change these statistics by including 45,000 mobile broadband subscribers, thereby increasing penetration to 16.5%, but this is only spin. Neither the OECD nor the EU includes mobile broadband in its data. This is because most users with a mobile broadband connection also have——

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