John Minihan (Progressive Democrats)

I welcome the Minister of State and his officials to the House. The recent EU Council meeting in Brussels, our recent annual party conference and the previous two Private Members' debates in the other House have all had discussions of energy policy at their heart. It was also the subject of a recent major policy discussion document published by my party. Energy policy finds itself in an unusually high position on the political agenda for obvious reasons, including concerns about security of energy supply, ensuring the continuing competitiveness of our economy and promoting environmental sustainability. How best to make progress on these issues is still far from settled and, in this context, I welcome the topic chosen by the Independent group. The Minister has spoken at length about the steps the Government has taken to promote renewable energy, so I do not intend to repeat them. Rather, I wish to focus on a few specific points and break the motion into its constituent parts, namely, our national energy strategy and renewable energy sources.

The Government intends to publish an energy policy consultation paper before the summer to set out medium and long-term perspectives for our national energy policy. There is no doubt this is needed, but the paper also needs to take account of the considerable and complex challenges for our energy policy into the future. The Minister has said it will deal with all aspects of the energy sector, including alternative energy.

The views of the Progressive Democrats are set out in Deputy Fiona O'Malley's discussion paper published last month. It deals with the most pressing energy issues in a seven-point action plan designed to develop Ireland's renewable energy supplies, protect the environment, thus fulfilling our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, secure our fossil fuel supplies and minimize the overall cost of energy to the economy, thus maintaining Ireland's competitiveness. This plan requires the following: that we promote the development of renewable energy for power generation; the use of renewable energy for space and water heating; the production and utilisation of biofuels for transport; energy conservation; fossil fuel exploration, production and supply security; the creation of new market structures and improved regulation; as well as the research and development of energy technologies of particular importance to Ireland.

We hope that all interested parties will read our paper and engage in this discussion process. Ireland is the last stop on an extremely long oil pipeline and our dependency on imported sources cannot continue in this way. We have set our policy for discussion and refinement, but I wish the same clarity were forthcoming from the Opposition. This is a pity, given the importance of the topic.

During the first week of Private Members' time in the Dáil on this issue, Fine Gael failed to devise a counter motion of its own on energy policy. It aligned itself with a madcap protectionist motion on energy resources, a motion its own spokesperson described as crazy. In week two, to make amends for the previous shambles, the party proposed a hurried motion of its own. This contained a less than nuanced approach to the promotion of indigenous biofuels production. In its contribution to the motion, the Labour Party confined itself to knocking the policy and progress of the Government, while conveniently neglecting to mention any of its own policies. I am not sure what is at the end of the rainbow, but there is no energy policy. The Independent group is at least making a good fist of opposition this evening.

The second issue is renewable energy. My own party's discussion paper, notwithstanding the obvious potential of biomass and biofuels, refers to Ireland having some of the best wind and wave energy potential on the planet. It discusses how Ireland could aim to produce 30% of its electricity supplies from renewable sources by 2015. Ireland is fortunate to have the expertise of the sustainable energy research group, based in University College Cork. The group was formed in order to investigate and promote the efficient use of renewable and non-pollutant energy sources. It carries out extensive research into energy policy, wind and hydroenergy systems, wind energy conversion systems and energy storage. The group has experts such Professor Tony Lewis, Brian Ó Gallachóir and Eamon McKeogh, researching and writing on the very issues at the heart of this debate. In an article published last month, the group stated:

In the long term, with fossil fuel reserves depleting, the key component of improving Ireland's security of energy supply is to gradually diversify completely from gas. Given that oil is in shorter supply than gas and the environmental concerns associated with coal and nuclear energy, including safety in the case of the latter, this points clearly to the increased penetration of renewable energy. Wind is the lowest-cost electricity source for the foreseeable future for Ireland. There is also significant potential for biomass energy in the first instance, as co-firing within the existing peat-fired power plants. Wave and tidal current energy also offer significant resource potential and require significant development and deployment effort, with potential export spin-off benefits.

We have the experts in Ireland. We should utilise and listen to them as they are a resource. They make reference to Ireland's utilisation of other resources and the potential export spin-off benefits, such as wave energy. Wave energy has possibly the greatest potential for energy production in Ireland, given our location, but many of the wave technologies are still at prototype stage.

The Progressive Democrats Party is a small party specialising in big challenges, and in the 21st century energy is the big challenge. Tony Blair exemplified the complexity of the debate on nuclear energy by saying yesterday that new nuclear plants were back on the agenda with a vengeance. Today he said nuclear energy is not the sole answer to meeting UK energy needs, but that failing to consider it would be a dereliction of duty. That is three views in two days from one individual.

Ireland rejects nuclear energy production here, but may benefit from its production elsewhere, if we are to be linked to interconnectors. We must get real about our discussions. The Progressive Democrats support the efforts undertaken by those in UCC and elsewhere to research and develop renewable energy sources. We support the greater use of biofuel, onshore wind and wave energy, which given recent oil and gas prices is very much an economic proposition. In the longer term, we believe that offshore wind and wave energy can make a major contribution to our energy needs.

Irish engineers are also working to develop technology that would allow us to anchor windfarms off the west coast and out of sight of land to exploit the wind resources of the north Atlantic. The Government will soon publish an ocean energy strategy that will set out a development path for ocean energy technology in Ireland. The Marine Institute and Sustainable Energy Ireland, in conjunction with the Government, recently opened a wave energy test site a mile and a half off the coast of Spiddal, County Galway. The 37-hectare site will be open to entrepreneurs and engineers to test prototype ocean energy generators. The first wave energy generator, the 'WaveBob', has been deployed on the Spiddal site. When such technology becomes commercially available, Ireland could become an exporter of energy to Europe. It is in this context that the construction of the interconnector becomes increasingly important, the planning for which has begun. We must be very serious about the contribution we can make to a European grid and we should not become dependent on what could ultimately be nuclear energy.

The potential market for commercial wave energy is very large. Denmark established itself as the world leader in wind energy production in the 1990s. Perhaps Ireland might do the same with wave energy, which could have spin-off benefits for other less obvious industries such as barge-making, since barges are submerged to harness tidal energy. When one thinks of Ireland's ship-building industry, it becomes apparent that we have the skills. This could be a whole new generation of skills to export. We have new initiatives such as biofuels, mineral oil tax relief schemes, the five-year package of excise relief valued at €250 million announced in the budget, and many other support schemes. Most of all, the initiatives, talents, and research and development skills of Irish and international experts are being brought to bear on this scientific field.

Significant progress is being made in the two areas highlighted by the Independent group. Both the energy consultation paper and the ocean energy strategy are on the way. As the Minister has set out extensively, much has been done regarding renewable energy generally. The Progressive Democrats support those and further measures.