Joe O'Toole (Independent)

That was the policy of the Senator's party and of the Fine Gael Party. It was done quite deliberately because Irish electricity was too cheap and the private sector could not get involved in that field. The regulator was given this job to do to raise the price of electricity and we are all paying the price for it. We all knew it would happen.

The Senator is right in what she said about political vision and leadership. A good example of that is the first and second programmes for economic expansion. I welcome the Minister of State to the House and he could tell Senator Mary White the damage those programmes have created to this day in his constituency. Dr. Whitaker and Mr. Lemass made no mention in the first and second programmes for economic expansion of the question of the marine. The marine industry was ignored in them. Having sat the leaving certificate, some of us went on to study economics some years later and the basis of our negotiations to get into the chómhargadh in 1973 were those two programmes. We sold away our fishing rights. The Minister of State's constituency among others has been paying the price ever since.

The same Dr. Whitaker who had vision and made a huge impact, when a power station producing cheap electricity in Bellacorick in the Minister of State's constituency was being closed a few years and a proposal was put forward for it to continue to operate for a further year by using the peat which had slid off the top of a hill in the north part of the Minister of State's constituency, objected because he would be discommoded by the transport of the peat passing his front door from the bog in north Mayo to Bellacorick. There is a need for balance in everything.

I am not taking from the great work Dr. Whitaker has done. He objected to free travel for old age pensioners as well.