Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. Like all my colleagues and the Minister and his officials, we now recognise that we have a serious crisis on our hands. All of us politicians must give hope to the Irish people now. We do not need to frighten and upset them. We need to tell them we will get them through this. I ask that everybody works together, even if we disagree on some issues. I know the Opposition will have different views on different issues. However, we need to get people through the next six months in particular. That is the one plea I would make.

Following up on what my colleague, Senator McGreehan said, a number of weeks ago, I highlighted in the local press in my area in the west and the midlands quite a number of family-run supermarkets, in particular, whose energy bills have gone from €8,000 and €9,000 to €15,000 and €16,000. I was shown one bill yesterday when I met retailers in a local town in east Galway that had risen to €24,000. In general, if that were to last for a year it means those types of family businesses and supermarkets would be spending up to €250,000 on one expense. I do not care what type of turnover a person has in a small business, that is not sustainable. Some domestic users also contacted me whose bills have gone from €350 or €360 up to €700.That increase took place over the two-month period from 28 June to 26 August. Admittedly, that family has looked at the usage of electricity in their home. They have showers and a pump for their water and that is a big user of electricity. I accept that we can all make some savings and be more efficient in how we use electricity but we have to try to keep the lights on and keep industry going. I welcome the fact that a package is being readied for domestic users and businesses because there is no doubt that it is much needed.

Like Senator McGreehan, I want clean energy. We want to get away from fossil fuels but we have to be careful. I refer to the great work being done here but even Alliance 90/The Greens in Germany see that they have to stall the digger for a little while to ensure they keep the lights on there and keep the energy coming. We cannot walk ourselves into darkness. We must use every opportunity available to us to keep those lights on, while having the debate about people being more efficient. I agree with the Minister about lights in public buildings. All of that is important because in some regards we have become careless about the way we use electricity. It often amazes me that we do not always turn off the lights when we leave our offices. At the same time, we need to bring our people with us. We need the wind to blow these weeks and it is not blowing greatly. It is beautiful weather but we need the wind to blow to generate electricity to get us over this.

We cannot shy away from having a reserve of gas. If we need to have a reserve of gas in our country, then we need it. This is the reality of keeping life, people and business going. We cannot shut the country down. This is the Government's responsibility. It will be addressed properly. It is the Government's responsibility to use every common-sense avenue open to it to ensure we have that power. I go back to Lanesborough and Shannonbridge power stations. I agree that fossil fuels are expensive and hard to run. The Government has pumped money into our area and that is gradually getting through, but we should get somebody to investigate Lanesborough and Shannonbridge power stations to see if we could reactivate them in some way. Maybe there is some fuel we could burn in them. Why not get somebody working on that straight away? It may only have been a small percentage that was being generated in those two power stations - in fact, it was very small - but every extra percentage of power we have is important to us. Maybe all these things are going through the Minister’s mind as he considers what we should do. I ask him not to go back to fossil fuels but to see if there is some use we can make of these stations in the short term, particularly Lanesborough because that was quite a new station. I accept that it will not happen overnight. We could even have the reserve there. If we look at something and get some experts in, we could do something with some other type of fuel. Crops can be grown. It is possible and it can be used. Perhaps hydro energy can be used. There are opportunities and possibilities out there.

By the way, I accept that we should continue the progress of clean energy as much as we can. I am a fan of wind energy and it can work. We need to get energy generation at sea working. When energy generation takes place inland, we need to be careful that we do not upset people too much. We have been waiting for regulations for a long time to ensure wind turbines are more than 500 m from any person's house. That has not changed. It has been going on for years and it needs to change. There is a general acceptance of wind power, and it can work, but maybe we put the cart before the horse in some ways. Maybe we should not have slammed the brakes on some of the power stations we had before we got all these things up and running. Having said that, it is important to have our own supply and our eyes are open to that now. We must ensure we do not have to rely on somebody else for it; that is the road to go down.

In the short term, I urge the Minister to ensure that we do everything to keep the lights on and that there is a package for domestic users, retailers and businesses in general to help them out. We cannot allow a massive recession to come out of this and that could easily happen. I thank the Minister for listening to me.