Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

That is the way to do it, with the bogs to be restored and it is possible to do that with revenues from wind energy and perhaps other types of biofuel energy in the midlands region. A lot of damage has been done to the ecosystems in the Bog of Allen and that is what the PSO levy is partly used for. There are serious environmental issues around this.

The point Fine Gael is making is that in these hard-pressed times small businesses are struggling to meet their costs, but there is a range of costs. If one considers the percentage of costs which involve electricity prices for any particular business, one will find some businesses are hit much more than others. We can examine imaginative ways to deal with that. In terms of the percentage most businesses spend on energy costs, the actual cost of the PSO over a year in many cases will be €200 or €300. It is a slight exaggeration to say small businesses are closing on the basis of €300. If we look at domestic rates which were discussed earlier, we could achieve far greater cost savings. I wish we could see local authorities which are mainly controlled by Fine Gael doing something-----