Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

Were I Deputy Coveney, I would watch out. He has a big man on either side. We will revert to the issue, as I would like to see progress. We must give detailed consideration to the point on whether we will be punishing inefficient generators.

Regarding some of the questions raised by Deputy McManus and others about whether we can be certain of the proceeds and whether the Minister for Finance has bought into the idea, the answer is "Yes". We have put a great deal of work into this area in the past two years to try to improve competitiveness for certain industries at this particularly sensitive time. For example, the food industry was at real risk one or two years ago because of high electricity prices and a dramatic drop in sterling. Many industries employing a large number of people were placed in danger. The Government worked to put together a platform of changes to achieve what has actually occurred, namely, a lowering of the cost at a critical time. I have entered into commitments to draft a flight path out of some of our high costs. This Bill is one element of that and the Government has agreed the overall approach, for which reason we are making these provisions in this way.

I have a myriad of areas in which we could spend money, but the Bill is part of a wider approach agreed with the regulator in terms of the pricing of electricity in an appropriately regulated and marketed way. However, it is not appropriate to include the detail of the allocation of funds in the Bill. It is better to put the money in the fund and then redistribute it in an effective way.

The Bill must be market based. We must work within the single electricity market and our regulated system, which has served us well. The Bill will be of benefit in achieving certain policy objectives in the next two years, but it cannot interfere with the competitive market because the latter is working.

I have listened to the Deputies' comments on players, in particular Endesa. We can revert to this matter on Committee Stage without committing to specific changes on Second Stage. The primary purpose of this Stage was to get the arguments out and to get the Bill into Committee Stage for further consideration. I look forward to that Stage.

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