Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail)

Senator Quinn is quite right to say it is time to have the courage to re-examine this matter. People have serious concerns about nuclear power on a number of fronts, but when one considers that the whole west coast of Great Britain is nuclear, and is a lot closer to Dublin than the west coast of Ireland, that does not hold water. Like Senator Quinn, I am not on either side of the fence, but I am certainly in favour of opening up such a debate. The Minister should take the initiative and bring a report before both Houses of the Oireachtas which we can peruse properly.

As a businessman, I know that one of the biggest costs facing business people is energy. We have seen competition between various energy providers, which is almost the same as the telecom sector. Every month, one finds a special savings offer asking the public to sign on with this or that crowd. People are switching but 18 months or two years' later they find their bills are higher than ever. It is time for some form of regulation in this respect. We should have a level playing pitch so that people can see the wood for the trees. The Minister might consider such regulation in due course.

As this is a Second Stage debate, I hope the Minister will not mind me raising an issue of both local and national interest. I know the Minister has been appraised of it by my Kerry colleague, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Jimmy Deenihan. It is the question of providing a gas terminal in the Shannon estuary on the north Kerry coast. This project was mooted seven years ago. As a county councillor at the time, I moved a planning procedure to enable a company called Shannon LNG to make plans for an imported liquid natural gas project, which was exciting for us at the time. Some 500 jobs would be involved at the construction stage in an area of high unemployment with a new wave of emigration. As the Minister knows, this project has the full support of the community in north Kerry. An individual succeeded in holding it up single-handedly for 18 months but apart from that, it has the full support of all sections of the community, including business people. For one reason or another, however it has fallen foul of every kind of hiccup one could possibly imagine. We had the much-heralded fast-forwarding of planning but there is canned laughter about that where I live because this project has been hampered every step of the way, not by objections but by internal problems. Many of those problems seem to have emanated from the last government, and the current one. This is a major project and several speakers have already referred to our dependence on gas from the Russian pipeline. That exposes us and leaves us very vulnerable. This is a proven, clean project. We have the deepest natural water outside of Rotterdam at the mouth of the Shannon Estuary, so it is ideal. The Minister will be in favour of taking a more hands-on approach to this project. Someone needs to drive it. I have no doubt of the bona fides of the principals in this scheme. It is not a money problem and cheques will be written if everything else is cleared. I appeal to the Minister to examine it.