Tom Shehan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with my colleague, Senator Ned O'Sullivan, as well as Senator John Whelan. Last week in a commencement debate I asked the Minister to make contact with the energy regulator on the decrease in fuel costs. Approximately 40% of our energy is being generated by gas, the price of which has dropped by 27% or 28%. As Senator Ned O'Sullivan said, in Britain the Minister has asked the energy regulator what it is doing to bring down the price and whether it has spoken to energy providers. We are now being told that Bord Gáis will bring down prices in March after the worst of the weather has passed and when old people will not need to heat their house 24 hours a day. That is nasty and horrible work on the part of Bord Gáis. We have not yet heard if Electric Ireland is dropping its prices. Some 40% of electricity is generated by gas, the price of which has dropped by 27%, yet there has been no cut in the price of electricity. That is wrong.

As has been said by Senator John Whelan, if need be, we should get rid of the energy regulator. My understanding of a regulator is that it is something like a balancing act, but all I have ever seen the regulator do is grant a price increase. For example, if Electric Ireland looks for a 21% hike in prices, the regulator will grant it an increase of 14%: "Haven't I done a good job? I didn't give it 21% but 14%." On other occasions, when an increase of 15% or 16% is looked for, the regulator grants an increase of 9%. That is not regulation. Regulation must be a two-way process. The role of the regulator regarding the tariff imposed on Shannon LNG for the use of a facility it was never going to use - the interconnector - was wrong. If I travel to Dublin by bus, I do not have to pay tolls or road tax. I was a member of the council when Senator Ned O'Sullivan was mayor and the issue came up at the time, 2004, with the development to be fast-tracked. Nothing has happened since. An anaerobic digester - a great invention, although perhaps not unique - is being put in place in Causeway and will meet the electricity needs of the whole community, including the secondary school which has about 600 students. The operators had to go to Switzerland to obtain finance, as not one of the banks here would finance it. It is a no-brainer. I know what the banks were doing regarding the assessment of risk, which did not come into it. Now no risk is taken. There is no risk in this instance, yet the banks did not see fit to finance the project and the operators had to go to Switzerland to obtain finance.

On broadband provision, looking at a map of Ireland makes me sick. The commercial operators are based in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. The west coast extends from County Donegal along counties Mayo, Sligo, Clare and Kerry to south-west Cork. Of course, they are entering the densely populated areas because it is commercially viable to do so. I was in Dingle recently. I was the sole Oireachtas Member invited to attend the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Sacred Heart University in the United States, UCC, Institute of Technology, Tralee and CIT, as part of which Sacred Heart University would set up a faculty for marine science, for which it has taken over the Christian Brothers school.