Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

There is no doubt we have a very unusual future ahead of us. It is difficult to say what direction it is taking. We are looking at wind and wave power as alternatives to using gas and oil. They involve their own inherent costs which are quite significant, no matter how much we may say they are sustainable or easier on the environment than other forms of energy supply such as gas and oil. One must ask if perhaps we should try to change our approach a little more than just looking at alternatives to gas and oil and look at fuel efficiency, not just the conservation issues the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is well-known for regarding housing stock, but across the board.

For instance, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean there are the United States of America and Europe. What makes European cars so much more fuel efficient than American cars? If one is in America one hardly ever sees a family car powered by diesel and the efficiency of its cars overall is abysmal, whereas in Europe we have been pushing for years to make our cars more fuel efficient and get the maximum amount of milage out of them. This is because we use taxes to keep the cost of fuel up, as opposed to America where petrol is extremely cheap. It is only in the last number of years the United States is changing its approach and trying to improve the fuel efficiency of vehicles on its highways.

We should perhaps look at focusing on and putting all our efforts into efficiency. For instance, in the Houses of the Oireachtas, in terms of making savings, what happens the hundreds of reports Members receive from the Department of Transport, the Department of Health and Children and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government? I presume they go for recycling or go in the bin. The majority of Members, unless they concern an area one has a particular interest in, do not even read them.

The same goes for all the information one gets in this House. Far too much of it is printed and delivered into our letter boxes and is not relevant. If we were to talk about efficiencies we should start with the Houses of the Oireachtas. An bord snip is looking at us, but its idea of efficiency is to get rid of us completely, which may not be necessary. There are ways of improving efficiency across the public service and Civil Service. Some private companies are better at this. There is no way a private organisation would turn out the amount of reports and paper trails on different issues which crop up on a daily basis at the same level as the public service and Civil Service.

The HSE threw out a significant amount of its headed paper simply because it changed its title. We see a waste of resources across the public service and Civil Service, such as inefficient buildings we constructed in the last number of years which should not have been allowed to happen. We need to look at how we are using energy across the public service and Civil Service. I know the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is interested in this and is looking at conserving energy in the housing stock of the ordinary man and woman, but we could be a little more pushy regarding making savings in what we spend in the private and public sector and we should have an emphasis on that.

Energy, such as that which comes from gas and oil, is a finite resource and will eventually run out, but there is not much point in expending millions of euro in looking for alternatives and we will not get the same efficiency out of energy produced from wind and wave power. Each kilowatt hour produced by wind and wave is expensive and will always remain so. It will be difficult to drive the technology to the point where we can push the price per kilowatt hour down simply because the wear and tear, especially of wave power, is quite extreme. Wind power has a certain amount of input costs we should keep in mind.

It is nice to have the luxury of saying we are against nuclear power because as long as we have the east-west and North-South connectors we can use all the nuclear power we want from the UK so we do not have to worry about having to build nuclear power plants on our own little island. However, we will be using nuclear power from the British mainland once those connectors are up and running and when we need to get energy from the UK. It is nice to have that luxury.

Looking at future energy needs, we should focus on conservation because it is the most significant issue. We are paying for energy costs all the time. If one looks across the economy, costs for many things are going down, but one area in which we do not see costs reducing is in services provided by Government. Anybody who receives a water charges or rates bill from the local authorities or applies for a driving licence or any service from local and public authorities and Government services is seeing costs going up. If one is looking at a new era of austerity, we should focus more on costs and I would like to see the response of the Minister, Deputy Ryan.