Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome this legislation. I have some knowledge of its pre-history. In the late 1970s I was working on the energy section in the Department of Foreign Affairs with the then Department of Industry and Commerce and I have a clear recollection of all the discussions that were going on, with the EEC and more particularly, the International Energy Agency, IEA, about the holding of reserves. Ireland was hit, as were other countries, by the second international oil crisis. Other speakers have evoked spectacles of the long queues, shortages and enormous price rises which seriously disrupted the economy. People are apt to give political explanations of our difficulties in the 1970s and 1980s and these are valid enough, up to a point. However, it was the background of the enormous increase in the price of oil that created difficulties for all the western economies. The international recession that hit after the second oil crisis, in 1980, was very deep. It lasted a good deal longer in Ireland than in most other countries. None of us is in any doubt about the importance of measures that will help to cushion us, to a degree, against the repetition of those circumstances.

Taking a 25 year perspective, undoubtedly all countries have reduced somewhat what was then an acute dependence on imported oil. There has been a recognition of the need to diversify sources of energy, a matter that is preoccupying us as well. For a period the Government in the late 1970s established the Irish National Petroleum Corporation, INPC. It required one of the most inspired pieces of State body acquisition, the Whitegate oil refinery. This was started by the outgoing Fine Gael-Labour Party coalition and completed by the incoming Fianna Fáil Government in the spring of 1982. Even though a levy had to be imposed we were buying some degree of security of supply. There was also the Whiddy Island oil terminal, where some of the reserves were stored. As time passed we found we could have pragmatic arrangements whereby reserves for which particular countries were responsible could be held abroad.

We are not without occasional distant rumbles of thunder when it comes to energy supply, with politically motivated interruptions to gas supplies from Russia and other countries in eastern Europe, where the control of pipelines is mostly from Moscow. In the event, the temptation for the Kremlin to use some of its potential political clout is virtually irresistible, at least in the local areas.

There is also the political stand-off in terms of the Iraq war which severely disrupted supplies from what had been one of the most important oil producers in the Middle East, apart from Saudi Arabia. There is also the political situation vis-À-vis Iran. We certainly hope President Bush's assurances that war will not break out there prove correct. Were conflict to break out, especially between the West and Iran, oil supplies could be highly disrupted. We certainly are not out of the woods.

I would be much happier if we were able to do more and that it was within our power to increase our security of supply. I am not referring to oil. The prolonged and continued stand-off over the Corrib gas field is not in the national interest. I hope that situation will be resolved. Perhaps on the other side of a general election, regardless of how it goes, it may be easier to resolve it. In the run-up to a general election, agitation on matters by various groups tends to increase.

The country needs those gas supplies, not because they would be available at a cheaper price than the world gas price, because that would not make economic sense, as we discovered with the Kinsale gas field and other forms of subsidised gas which were used for a period when employment was much less readily available and much more needed than today, but primarily from a security of supply point of view. While the initial stages of the project in terms of public relations and consultation with the local community left a great deal to be desired, many extraneous matters were brought into the issue. While safety considerations are legitimate matters for local groups to be concerned about and protest about, national energy policy is not a matter for groups to exercise obstruction. National energy policy is a matter for the Government and the Oireachtas.

I do not have much sympathy with what seems to be 1970s style national resource socialist thinking, the type of thinking that inspired decisions taken when Justin Keating was the Minister in charge of energy in the mid-1970s. We have moved on from that and more than 30 years have passed since then. Nobody expects that oil and gas supplies in this country, even if we have more of them than we suspect, will make us a wealthy nation. I remember writing papers in 1979 or 1980 on the political and economic consequences of oil-gas finds, which was an interesting exercise. Ireland has not turned out to be, and clearly will not be, a second Norway in terms of abundance of supply. We have managed to make significant progress in terms of prosperity through entirely different routes.

Energy is still important and the high cost of it is one of the threats in terms of the challenges to our competitiveness and continued prosperity. Oil will not be black or Spanish gold that somehow transforms the country. Any thinking based on that is fallacious.

We still need to pay attention and attribute importance to having in place a proper energy conservation policy. I accept there is such a policy and initiatives to encourage it but we need to keep working on that. The Taoiseach, at the recent Ógra Fianna Fáil conference in Galway, made a number of energy related environmental proposals, which I hope the next Government will implement.

I very much support this necessary Bill. It is important but it will only take us so far. Our security of energy supply relies on much more than energy policy, important though that is. It also relies on how international politics and diplomacy are conducted. It is important that we reduce the energy intensity of our economy.