James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

This position is all the more galling when the Germans are producing carbon free energy. This is a gross abuse of monopoly and it must stop.

When oil prices increase, energy companies are very efficient and responsive in putting prices up but it is a different story when prices are coming down. The consumer and business community are slow to receive the benefit of falling oil prices. This is unacceptable where price and value for money are the key to economic survival. Our businesses and communities must be provided with competitively priced energy. The price of oil has collapsed by more than 80% to approximately $40 a barrel, yet we are waiting for realistic adjustments. To add insult to injury, staff salaries in the ESB increased by 3.5% last week. This is not the real world. The days of State monopolies and local authorities automatically foisting additional charges onto the public and business must end. We are paying a premium of approximately 10% of every electricity bill because the regulator insists on the cost of carbon emissions being levied even though electricity companies do not need to pay for such costs. This is crazy stuff and is theory gone mad.

The opportunities provided for a green energy industry in a country like Ireland, surrounded as it is by wind and sea with long hours of sunlight, are enormous and hold forth the prospect in the future of our economy being independent of the vagaries of the global fossil fuel market. This very real possibility will not happen unless the Government wakes up to it and, instead of paying lip service to the concept, brings about real change to the current obsolete arrangements. These proposals are the first step in that regard. I commend the motion.

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