Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House. We have certainly bitten off a lot in the space of a 90-minute debate as any of the three elements would be worthy of a full afternoon of statements. I will therefore have to cut to the chase and stick very much to my script. I find I will have to leave out all the nice bits. The key message from Fianna Fáil is that the Government's policies in the areas of energy and broadband are leading to higher costs in services for the Irish people. The Government has failed to outline a plan to secure the future of the post office network and the record speaks for itself. Ireland has the fourth most expensive electricity in the EU with prices up by 15% since 2011. The broadband market is now the third most expensive in Europe and Government infrastructure projects are ignoring community involvement. The post office network is under threat as social protection moves towards electronic payments.

I will begin with broadband. In government, Fianna Fáil invested heavily in the provision of broadband infrastructure as technology was developing. We committed over €450 million to the provision of broadband services during the period 1999 to 2011. While many areas will benefit from recent announcements by Eircom, UPC and so on, there will still remain around 900,000 homes and businesses in the State for which commercial operators will not invest in broadband provision, as the areas concerned are considered to be unviable commercially. The Government has stated that it wants to ensure that all citizens have access to high-speed broadband no matter where they live or work. It has failed to keep that commitment to provide quality broadband to rural areas and has allowed a two-tier recovery between urban and rural. That is becoming more and more obvious in every walk of life. This is just another example.

The Government is presiding over a broadband market that is the third most expensive in Europe. The poor quality broadband in many areas and the high cost of this service compared to other European countries is doing serious damage to our competitiveness and holding back the economic recovery in many parts of Ireland. Despite Government claims in its recently published national broadband plan that €512 million will be spent to provide broadband to all households in the country, no money has actually been spent on providing broadband to those households. The Government proposals have yet to receive EU state aid approval, which is critical. There is also a lack of clarity surrounding where the Government will source the revenue needed to finance this plan. The Government has been talking about the national broadband plan since it was elected in 2011. There are a further five stages of consultation and strategy development envisaged on the national broadband plan. Given that this latest plan was announced in April 2014, one month before the local and European elections, it is understandable that many people are cynical about the reality of the Government's plan.

The Government has also failed to address the false advertising of broadband speeds by those providing broadband services in Ireland. Independent tests have revealed that broadband speeds do not reach those advertised by broadband providers and that some speeds only hit 10% of the promised speed capacity. It is a matter the Minister should take on board and inquire into.

Fianna Fáil in government made proposals to consolidate the post office network and increase commercial activity in every post office unit. We are committed to guaranteeing the network as it currently exists, to expanding An Post's financial services, allowing post offices to become centres for all state payments and charges, creating shared community services and multi-purpose spaces in rural post offices, and providing Internet and printing facilities at rural post offices where appropriate. The Irish Postmasters Union, or IPU, and postal workers believe that key State contracts from the Department of Social Protection and the National Treasury Management Agency, or NTMA, may be awarded to an entity other than An Post or that these payments will be made electronically in future. Evidence of this change was recently seen when the Minister for Social Protection proposed changing social welfare law to allow service providers other than An Post to distribute social welfare payments in the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2014. The Minister must clarify the position in this regard.

The IPU claims that up to 600 post offices could close if the Government continues to move to electronic payments. It has also raised concerns about a new "post and pay" system being developed with Tesco. Almost 60% of An Post's revenue is generated from contracts awarded to it from the Department of Social Protection or the National Treasury Management Agency. The economic environment has become increasingly difficult for the postal network in recent times. An Post has experienced a decline in revenue from €876 million in 2007 to €807 million in 2012. Falling revenues have resulted in An Post having a group operating loss of €17.5 million in 2012, down from a profit of €2.2 million in 2011.

There is a need now for An Post to utilise its post office network to its highest potential. The Minister said that only five post offices had closed but while I am prepared to accept his word on that, there is another issue which is becoming very important in rural Ireland, whether the Minister knows about it. It is not so much about closing post offices, but about moving them. Post offices are moving from traditional town centre locations out to megastores which are outside the traditional retail areas of smaller towns. That hits streets that are already full of shops with "To Let" or "For Sale" notices up. My own town of Listowel is a typical example. A traditional post office location which greatly benefitted one section of the town is moving to the largest supermarket with a resulting huge loss to local shopkeepers and publicans who depend on the bit of income available, especially on pension day when people come to town. This removal of post offices from towns is very unwelcome to the public as shown by the number of huge demonstrations in Listowel in only the last couple of weeks. What hope can the Minister give to the small shopkeeper or retailer who sees something as important to the infrastructure of his or her small town as the post office moving out to fresh fields?

I turn to the White Paper on energy, but will have to cut my remarks short given the time available. Fianna Fáil considers that Ireland's current energy policy is driving prices up, making our economy uncompetitive and failing to tap into the opportunities presented by community energy projects. It is vital that renewable energy projects are developed in a sensitive manner to the environment around them and that they benefit the local economy. It is also important to stand back and have a whole new look at the wind energy business. Fianna Fáil considers that there should be a phasing out of the wind energy subsidy as this is now a mature and well developed element of the energy sector. When it comes to energy policy in general, Fianna Fáil asks the Government to be proactive in creating jobs in any way it can through the creation of energy. Without being parochial, I do not have to go too far from where I live to the Shannon Estuary, where one of the biggest projects, the LNG project, has been on the books for a long time.

I was mayor of Kerry when planning permission was granted for that project, back in 2004. The project was supposed to be fast-tracked, bringing in liquid gas and degasifying it and creating jobs. The Minister's predecessor, Deputy Rabbitte, took a particular interest in that project, but came up against the CER. I implore the Minister to take a fresh look at the project. The future of an area depends on these kinds of jobs. Apart from the jobs this project would create in Kerry and Clare, this project would guarantee energy security.

On a matter of interest, in the United Kingdom, the energy regulator there wrote in June 2014 to the largest power suppliers seeking an explanation for consumers as to why a decline in wholesale gas and electricity prices had not led to lower fuel bills. Is the Minister asking this question here? If not, why not? Why is the Energy Regulator not more proactive on this glaring anomaly?

I will conclude on that note. While I have a script, I tend not to read scripts as I prefer to be more spontaneous in what I say. There has been too much ground to cover on the agenda for this debate. More time on another day should be provided.