Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I thank my colleagues from all sides of the House who contributed to the debate. I thank the Labour Party and Sinn Féin in particular for agreeing to support the motion, despite tabling a specific amendment owing to a policy difference on the transfer of assets. However, they have given full support to the motion's focus on energy prices and the need to change our regulatory system.

This debate has focused attention on the fact that businesses and households simply pay too much for energy. It has resulted in the Minister announcing an energy price review, which I welcome. Unfortunately, like so many announcements the Minister makes, we have not received a timescale so we do not know when it will happen. We do not want or need a review that goes on for months and results in a double-digit price reduction sometime at the end of the year. We will get that without any extraordinary price review. That will happen in the course of time anyway. We are asking for an immediate price review as an emergency response.

Part of the Government's national recovery plan for the economy should be to try to improve competitiveness and try to give people hope that not everything that comes from this House is bad news for them. This should be a good news story this week. We should be announcing double-digit price reductions in electricity and certainly high single-digit price reductions in gas as a result of an urgent price review. Those benefits should be happening next month or the following month and not in six or eight months' time.

That is what I mean when I talk about the need for this House to respond urgently to issues outside of budgetary issues, which the Government is attempting to resolve this week by inflicting pain across society. This is a good news story on which the Government could have come with us and supported us. It could have given a clear positive message to people that we will alleviate the pain of households by reducing the cost of electricity and improve the conditions for cost competitiveness for businesses, thereby alleviating their pain and the pressures they are experiencing to some small extent.

For months, business leaders and representatives have talked about the pressures they are experiencing that relate directly to the cost of energy. A Government spokesperson put his finger on it today when he spoke about a large business that is based in the UK and Ireland. It pays 50% more for electricity in Ireland than it pays in the UK. What kind of incentive is that to attract businesses into the country at a time when we need them more than ever?

Last night, the Minister correctly spoke about the three pillars of energy policy: competition, security and clean power generation. This party wholeheartedly supports what the Minister is trying to do in terms of trying to transform energy generation here to increase the use of sustainable renewable sources of power through wind and wave technologies. Many positives can come from that through generating new industries and new green jobs for highly skilled and some not so skilled people in constructing wind farms onshore and offshore, and in constructing and developing apparatus that can capture the power of waves and deliver that power onto the grid in a competitive pricing arrangement. We want to see that happen.

However, the Minister is wrong in claiming that competition in the energy market in Ireland is working. It is not working. We have paid for and continue to pay for the facilitation of competition in the Irish energy market to attract new entrants to compete in the market. However, we are not getting the price benefits of that competition. Competition is no good if it does not deliver benefits for domestic and business consumers. That is where we are at the moment. We are continuing to pay to facilitate competition and a weakening of the ESB in the Irish electricity market, but we are not getting price benefits for households or businesses. That is damaging Ireland at a time when we cannot afford to suffer that damage. That is why this motion is so important, particularly this week.

I wish to make some suggestions to the Minister and the experts in his Department for the price review in which I hope his Department will be deeply involved rather than just leaving it to the regulator. The Minister should consider the six proposals we have made in a non-party political motion — Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are not even mentioned in it. These are proactive positive suggestions as to how we can re-regulate our energy market to reduce costs and prices.

One of the areas in which I did not address a problem last night is in the industrial electricity market. In that area, the focus needs to be on reducing the cost of transmission and distribution of energy in Ireland. This is the non-competitive energy sector in Ireland. Last night, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, expressed concern at possible distortions of market conditions. The competitive market will not be distorted by reducing transmission and distribution costs. There is plenty of scope for cost reduction in that area.

There is an underlying concern that the Minister believes that green thinking means that having high energy prices is somehow a good thing and that by keeping energy prices high, we will force people to reduce their usage and conserve energy in a more responsible way. It is possible to reduce prices and also do the other two things. They are not separate, mutually exclusive issues. Ireland cannot afford to have the luxury of keeping energy prices high in an effort to change consumer behaviour. We must change the way we regulate energy in Ireland to prioritise for the next two years the provision of cheap electricity to consumers, to households and to business in order to try to get this country back on its feet. At the same time, we must move the green energy market agenda forward and it is possible to do both at the same time.

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