Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I was in Scotland on Friday on this business. I met the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth in the absence of the Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism to discuss some of these issues in a side conference during the British-Irish Council meeting. Earlier last week I was in London to meet the Minister of State with responsibility for energy, Mr. Charles Hendry, to agree the goal that by the end of this year we will have concluded a memorandum of understanding between the two countries that will facilitate the export of energy from this island to the neighbouring island in what ought to be a win-win situation. The British Government needs access to renewable energy to help meet its targets, and perhaps for more substantial reasons. Meanwhile we have the capacity to perhaps generate as much energy again as the country uses. The total requirement of the island is approximately 7,000 MW and we have the capacity to generate as much again if we had a market for it. We must have a market for it otherwise there is no point. If our market cannot absorb it there is no point in generating excess electricity. We had a very good meeting in London at which we agreed that by July the officials will have highlighted the difficult issues that remain to be dealt with. The two Ministers will meet again in October if necessary and some form of intergovernmental framework or memorandum of understanding will be concluded by the end of the year. There could be many jobs in this if we can develop projects of scale here and the renewable capacity exported.

To answer Deputy Ferris's question on large and small wind farms, the State companies, including Bord na Mona, Coillte and the ESB, have been very innovative which ought to be acknowledged. Deputy Ferris is correct and there are thousands and not hundreds of acres of cutaway bog and the facility to have developments of scale on Coillte land and this is very important. However, I would not like to say to small would-be developers in the system that we will try to squeeze them out.

See this speech in context