Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am as aware as anybody else of issues related to our declining competitiveness. It is worth pointing out that the Scandinavian countries are mostly in the top ten while we are in the bottom 20s in terms of international competitiveness. Therefore, when we deal with issues such as electricity and energy we need to make sure that what we will do is what will work. We have attempted to introduce what we call competition into the telecommunications industry — which most people now recognise is an unmitigated disaster, with our broadband infrastructure having fallen behind as various speculators have rewarded themselves once or twice by manipulating the ownership of our major telecommunications company — which is now acknowledged by international advisers as being wonderfully good at out-manoeuvring regulators. The first thing we need to do is to learn how to regulate and when we learn that we can deal with how monopolies should be dealt with. However, if we do it the other way around, we are simply turning a public monopoly into a private monopoly and it will then proceed to run rings around the State and make enormous amounts of money for a small number of people, and that is not good for anybody.

We should attach some reality to the forecast of 15 years of limitless growth that apparently faces us. It would serve the country well if this House were to regularly debate the medium and longer-term issues that will confront us and, perhaps, persuade some Minister to begin to look a little beyond the next six months. A major issue faces us in terms of energy, as Senator Finucane has often pointed out, and will face us in terms of oil supply in approximately 15 years time. Some countries are planning for an oil-free future, but we are sitting here hoping the problem will go away. If this House has a purpose it ought to be to get Ministers to think a little beyond next week, next month or even the next election.