Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

Members on both sides have acknowledged that the hole in the public finances is huge. However, the answer must be to save jobs and create new ones. I have no confidence that this will happen while energy prices remain as high as they are at present. The impact of what is occurring was brought home to me last week when I met representatives from Celestica, a company in Galway that is seeking 80 redundancies. It was indicated to me that these jobs are being lost as a result of the cost of electricity to industry. Since 1 October, Celestica's electricity bill has increased by €500,000. No business could sustain such a rise. The senior management explained that this makes the company uncompetitive in the context of bidding for new work. I was informed that there is work available but that the company needs to be able to control costs and keep them down.

I ask the Leader to encourage the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to work together. There is an urgent need for joint action. It is no longer labour costs that are causing the difficulty; as Senator Hanafin stated, it is the cost of energy. I discovered that because the company is locked into a 12-month contract whereby it was obliged to buy electricity at 14 cent per kilowatt. If it was allowed to break that contract, it could be bought at 9 cent per kilowatt. The Government has the power to intervene because, as I discovered, there is no regulator for the industrial sector. Why is the Government not giving leadership.

I spent two hours talking to people on dole queues in Galway yesterday and I discovered that 13,000 people in the county are signing on.