Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I very much agree with Senator Norris. Mervyn Taylor was certainly a very forward thinking politician. I read an article about him in recent days on how many friends that he had in other political parties. He was a really good man. It is very appropriate that Senator Norris should mention him today and I am sure that all Members would agree.

I wish to briefly refer to two items. It is coming up to budget time and old age pensioners need to be respected, and thought about, in a very serious way. I hope the Minister for Finance and the Minister for the Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, will look very sympathetically at giving a good rise to our old age pensioners. Our old age pensioners have served all their lives and have done their bit for society. Many of them have raised their families and, in today's world, many of them give financial help to their children and grandchildren. It would be very wrong of the State, despite the difficulties we face, and the many financial challenges we will face, not to treat our pensioners well. I hope that a message will go out loud and clear from everybody here today that when budget time comes that pensioners would be well looked after, particularly as they still do a lot of good service for this country.

I wish to briefly discuss the serious problem that we will have with energy supply.I know the Government and Minister are making every effort to ensure we do not have blackouts this winter and, hopefully, this will not happen. Let me say clearly that I understand what we need to do in terms of the environment. I understand the difficulty and danger posed by fossil fuels. Let me be quite clear about that. I support Government policy in dealing with that but in the short term, I would like the Government to look at the possibility of re-opening two peat-powered power stations in my part of the country on a temporary basis. One station is in Lanesborough while the other is in Shannonbridge. Of course, it is not the right thing to do in terms of the environment but in the short term, it is very important that we keep the lights on in this country. When we speak about the just transition, initially we were told it would be eight years, then it went down to two and then lower than that. We all co-operated with that and we know what we need to do but I am asking that for a two or three-year period, we re-open those power stations to assure people that they will have a supply of power not just in their homes but in their businesses. This is really important and is a real challenge for us. In the short term, it is the right thing to do. I am not going against climate change measures we need to take. I understand that but the first crisis involves keeping our lights on and, hopefully, this will be taken into consideration.