Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

The Minister constantly asks for all sides of the House to come together on energy policy because it is so important for the nation. Transport policy in particular is a very difficult issue for us to resolve from the point of view of energy security for transport. It is great to discuss the free availability of diesel and petrol. In the 1970s, when I first got interested in politics, the issue which first drew me into the Green Party was that of peak oil. I remember the oil crisis of the 1970s when we could not go to school by car because we did not have fuel. This was to do with OPEC and other countries refusing to give us oil. There was an embargo on oil and I have spoken to various people in Cuba about the embargoes they have suffered and they have had to come up with interesting ideas. Senator Quinn mentioned Brazil, which has a deliberate policy of using ethanol. Brazil has large tracts of land where bio-fuels can be easily produced, and they have been doing so for a long time.

Our transport fuel is not secure. Almost all of our transport fuel is imported and there is no guarantee that this will continue forever. In fact, there is a guarantee that it will not continue forever. The need for transport fuel will become increasingly difficult. Quite often, people confuse the issue of climate change with that of peak oil. The peak oil issue is about future energy security. If the oil tap was turned off tomorrow, I do not know exactly how long the country's existing economic structures would survive but it would not be very long. This is a possibility. I may be using fear now, but this is a very real situation.