Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am delighted to get the opportunity to speak on this EirGrid Bill. This is a very important topic because it embraces the question of the energy requirements of this country for years to come. There was a lost opportunity over the past four or five years to increase the capacity of electricity that was badly needed to keep up with the growth in our industrial set-up and buildings. I will come back to that at a later stage in my speech.

We approach this energy situation at a time when we hear about a figure of $120 per barrel for oil on the world oil spot market. I thought I would not see or hear that figure for many years. As we know, the price fluctuates up and down but those are all pointers to the future. It is not so long ago that the price of a barrel of oil was around $60. I heard two economists on radio recently say that it is entirely possible that in the next five or six years, it could reach $200 per barrel under certain circumstances.

Can one imagine the effect this would have on us from everyone driving into this House to do their work, be they politicians or staff, to the people who work in our factories? Can one imagine the cost of production and the effect it would have on jobs and heating for the elderly? One could not imagine the effect something like that would have on the living standards of every man, woman and child in the country.

This Bill will not solve all the problems. Hopefully, it will give us an opportunity through the interconnector system to at least see a security of supply, provided that the countries from which we are getting it have a security of supply themselves. We will return to renewables in a minute. In my area of east Galway, which is not an industrial area, I have noticed that over the past three or four years, particularly the past 12 months, the amount of electricity used is increasing at a considerable annual rate. However, all of a sudden, we have pure blackness. A blackout happens for no reason in the world and electricity goes off for perhaps five or six hours. The strange thing is that the same area gets hit again in about a week's time. I am talking about today, last month and the month before that.

I know the ESB had to use mobile generators in the past year or two to try to boost the current around the country. Let nobody tell me that somebody was thinking about energy security over the past five or six years when that had to happen. There are many aspects of energy over which no Government has control, no matter who is in power. However, one of the elements of the equation over which we have control is ensuring that there is competition in respect of the market and delivery of the product.

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