Martin Brady (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Finneran. Senator Quinn made relevant points that members of the public also make. I do not like using the term "ordinary people", which is often used. I do not know what ordinary or extraordinary people are like, but people are asking questions about green energy. For example, if they want to get a wind charger or so on, they ask whether buying a charger for €20,000 or €30,000 would be worthwhile in terms of payback, efficiency and whether it will be obsolete within two years. We must give people direction.

We are doing the right things, given the use of electric cars, transport fleets running on natural gas and so on. All of this is well and good, but we need a clearly itemised plan to engage the public. People do not understand exactly what is required of them. There is considerable confusion. Senator O'Reilly referred to the number of unused mills. When I asked an expert about them, he told me that they were beautiful wheels that looked lovely in the countryside but were only 20% efficient. We must consider matters such as efficiency, cost, final benefit and viability. None of the answers has been established, so we cannot tell people what they should be doing. People who are getting their homes tested under the building energy rating system wonder how much a test will cost, how they can go about doing it and what they would need to get done if their homes do not pass. Senator Quinn is right about there being much confusion.

Senator Boyle referred to wildlife, which I like. I do a lot of fishing, which has allowed me to see the effects on wildlife. Animals cannot find food in their natural habitats, so they go around housing estates and so on searching for food at night. In many areas, fish are dead in the water. There is no fight in them at all. We must recognise that something is going wrong because wildlife is important. I usually agree with Senator Coffey, but he stated that we should be considering humans. Humans enter into the discussion on wildlife because the latter is important to our tourism and food industries.

I do not want to be repetitive, but we have lacked proper planning. The recent floods brought this problem to light in no uncertain way. People have asked what caused the floods, as Senator O'Reilly stated. There is much confusion and we do not really know the cause. We are sceptical of scientists and experts, asking how they could know and saying that they are wrong.

We should have an itemised plan to spell out clearly to the members of the public who want to participate how they can do so in a cost-effective way. In today's climate, no one can spend money without knowing the eventual benefit.