Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 187: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his preferred options for the future of the ESB, Eirgrid, the entire generation and transmission systems; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23288/07]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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The task of providing a competitive, secure, and sustainable energy future for Ireland poses considerable challenges for Ireland's electricity industry. It also presents exciting opportunities for the sector. Both EirGrid and ESB have critical roles to play.

The ESB Group will remain a strong, commercially viable and integrated entity with a leading role to play in supporting the development of renewable energy and demand side and management strategies. ESB International will be strongly growing its UK, European and international business. ESB Group will continue to compete successfully with Viridian, Airtricity and all other independents in power-generation and electricity supply in the all-island electricity market.

EirGrid, as the independent owner and operator of the national grid, is securely positioned in that strategic role so that it can fully contribute to supporting an effective competition environment and transparency in the electricity market, a stable investment as well as ensuring security of supply and generation adequacy.

The Programme for Government, together with the White Paper on Delivering a Sustainable Energy Future for Ireland, explicitly confirms the Government's position that the electricity and gas networks, as strategic national assets, will remain in State ownership and will never be privatised. The transfer of ownership of the transmission assets to EirGrid is taking place by end 2008 in that context.

In relation to generation, the establishment of a gross mandatory pool in the context of the Single Electricity Market — which is to commence operation on 1 November — is designed to deliver an efficient and fully competitive all-island generation market. The CER-ESB Asset Strategy, which was agreed between the Commission for Energy Regulation and ESB in November 2006, is an important step in ensuring that the optimum conditions prevail to underpin the establishment of real competition in that market. The Strategy is designed to ensure the progressive reduction in ESB's market share in power generation to around 40% in an all-island market context by 2010. In addition to the expected positive impact on market conditions, it is the expectation that ESB Power Generation will also become more efficient and commercial in the process.