Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Deputy Daly is confusing many things in that peroration and, in the process, misrepresenting the policy of the Labour Party then and of the Government now. This matter is attracting enormous concentrated attention. We will proudly deliver on our extraordinarily ambitious target of 40% generation of electricity from renewables by 2020. As I said in my reply, I am in negotiations with the British Energy Secretary with a view to concluding a memorandum of understanding on an international framework to permit trade in renewable energy from this country to the neighbouring island. That holds out the prospect of significant employment. We have a relatively small market in Ireland, amounting to some 7,000 MW on an all-island basis. We may well have the capacity to generate much more provided we have an export outlet. There is no point, however, in generating electricity which we cannot use because storage is a problem. It is a very exciting area and some of the proposals announced in recent weeks by large-scale players in the industry are very interesting. However, they cannot proceed until an intergovernmental framework is in place, which I hope will be the case by the end of the year.

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