Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

We have heard much talk from the Government for the past three years without seeing any action. Again tonight the Minister of State has said that "we must work together". The Fine Gael motion is a simple motion that sets out things that any sensible Government would want to do with the support of the Opposition. What happens? We see old style politics. The Government rushed in with an amendment so that the Opposition would not get any credit for raising this serious issue. We will pass through the lobbies at 8.30 p.m. to have a vote on what? The greatest natural resource we have, our climate in terms of wind and wave, presents opportunities for jobs. We have 427,000 people unemployed and we have endless talk coming from the Green Party Ministers about the potential that exists. What action have we got?

I have the pleasure of chairing the all-party Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security. We are dealing with legislation that is out of date, the Foreshore Act 1933. When that Act was introduced nobody anticipated that one day we would have turbines out in the sea generating power. No preparation has been done.

We have had plenty of talk. We are talking about wave power, but we do not have a grid that is capable of carrying the power. We are talking about interconnection and yet we do not have an upgraded grid or any sign of forward investment that will bring about the grid to carry the new energy we will produce from our natural resource so that it can become an export. Instead of spending €6.5 billion on imported fossil fuels as has been stated by speaker after speaker, we could be exporting power and getting money into the country. We have a great opportunity to create jobs and be the centre for research and development because we are an island nation in the middle of the Atlantic at the west of the European Union, which has a population of 500 million and is crying out for power.

Nobody has shown me a proposal for ongoing infrastructure investment to allow all this development take place. It is not possible to export goods without having rail or roads in order to do so. It is not possible to export power without a grid to do it. Over the years we have seen our road network improve so that we can export the goods we produce here. However, while there is talk about improving our grid there is no sign of a plan for significant investment to enable it to be built in order to export the power we will produce. I am tired of listening to the plea for co-operation because when we try to co-operate we get back to old-style politics.

I shall give another example. The all-party committee went to the trouble of producing our own legislation for the Government, the offshore renewable energy development Bill. This was all-party legislation produced by a committee which I have the pleasure of chairing. We sent it to the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and got one visit from him on that subject nearly two years ago, but we have heard no more about it. However, the Government has made no alternative proposal on offshore development.

When Deputy McManus produced a Bill on climate change, we produced the heads on an all-party basis. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government told us that he was to produce his own legislation and so that piece of work done by the all-party went into the dustbin again. There is all of this talk about having co-operation. I would appeal to the commentators who from time to time give us lectures about the need to put away this inter-party rivalry and think about the country. When we do try to think about the country by producing a very sensible motion, we get the same old-style politics - we will march up the stairs and divide on this issue.

I repeat that we have an opportunity in this regard. I have met various business groups and associations, as have my colleagues on the committee. We are talking about a possibility of €16 billion of investment into this country but we do not have the infrastructure. Let us consider the opportunities we have. We are talking about a super-grid throughout Europe. We are an island nation and we need connection not only into Britain but also into the European continent. We should be lobbying and persuading Europe that there should be grants to help us develop our internal grid to carry that power into the interconnectors for export to Europe. All of this potential exists if somebody would do something about it. Let us stop the talking and have action.

See this speech in context