Ar dtosach, ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis na Seanadóirí sin a chuir fáilte romham mar Aire Fuinnimh agus a chuir a gcuid deá-mhéin in úil dom. Ba mhaith liom thar cheann Bord na Móna buíochas a ghabháil leis na Seanadóirí go léir a labhair i dtaobh an bhoird sa treo inar labhardar ag moladh an obair atá déanta ag an mbord agus an súil go leanfaidh siad leis an deá-obair atá ar siúl acu le fada an lá.
A surprising number of Senators contributed to the debate. I found it heartening. The whole tone of the discussion was constructive and inevitably a number of people made similar points. I will not go through the comments made by each Senator in turn but rather will try to take the themes that were selected and deal with them, except where there were specific points at issue which should be dealt with.
One point brought up by a number of Senators was the suggestion that Bord na Móna are in some way acquiring land and turbary rights from farmers. Nobody said that they were actually using compulsory purchase methods but, nevertheless the suggestion was that they seem to be taking not alone the turbary rights they require but leaving households with no rights at all, so that they have to go out and wait in the queue for a very long time to get turf in the towns. It may be that that has happened in some cases but I must confess to a certain scepticism about it. My information is that Bord na Móna try at all times to ensure that there will be enough turf left to serve the households from whom land is bought. If there is any case that a Senator is aware of where Bord na Móna acted unfairly—indeed somebody suggested that they even have acted illegally—I should like to hear about it and get details. I want to ge quite frank and tell the House that I do not think it is very likely that such evidence will be forthcoming, but if it is I should like to hear about it.
On this question of the amount Bord na Móna pay, I am a little mystified about some things that were hinted at rather than said. As I understand it, the position is that while Bord na Móna have compulsory purchase powers, in fact the acquisition of bogland by Bord na Móna is on a voluntary basis. It may be, as some Senators suggested, a small farmer cannot afford to go into arbitration with Bord na Móna or thinks he cannot anyway. In that connection I want to say that Bord na Móna welcome any attempt to bring test cases to the official arbitrator so as to determine the value of turbary in a particular area. Once that is determined it can operate for all the other cases in the area unless there are some exceptional circumstances. In particular, a grouping of cases, something of the kind suggested by Senator Connaughton for the IFA grouping together, would be welcomed by Bord na Móna as providing a reasonable measure on an area of what should be paid.
I want to make it clear that Bord na Móna are not, of course, trying to act as Scrooge in relation to the small farmers of this country. That is not their role. On the other hand, they have an obligation to this House and to the taxpayers not to allow themselves to be taken for a ride. They are doing a reasonable job in difficult circumstances but where there is any doubt about the price being paid, the procedure is there and it is used, and Bord na Móna would like to see it perhaps used a little more in certain areas whereby the official arbitrator would determine the value of holdings in particular areas, or maybe a group of holdings, and that can hold and be a guide and enable the acquisition to be done quickly, for which Senators were pleading, and to be completed without undue delay.
I was urged by some Senators not just to step up the conservation campaign, which will be done, but Senator Whitaker in particular urged that certain aspects of it should be made compulsory and mandatory and that it is not sufficient to rely on exhortation. He used a number of other phrases to describe what is going on. I cannot just remember them at the moment but that is what it amounted to.
I believe that the first thing that has to be done in this area is to arouse a consciousness among people of the degree to which all of us are wasteful of energy. There is not one person among us who, if telling the truth and examining his or her conscience accurately, would not have to confess that he or she is wasteful of energy. If we can get people conscious of this that is the first step. The next step is to indicate to them ways in which energy can be saved. There are numerous ways in which all of us can save energy without creating discomfort or difficulty for ourselves. There is a very considerable area of phasing to be effected in the balance of payments figures by doing that. First stage is consciousness, the next stage is action.
Senator Whitaker said that increasing price—these may not be his words but I think this was the sense of it—is not a sufficient inducement to make people save energy. I will have to confess that he is right, to some extent at any rate. The evidence is that people do not save energy as the price goes up, particularly in the field of petrol. The evidence is that they tend to go on using petrol whatever the price. That is a theory that obviously cannot be tested until one reaches the limit.
It may be that we are in the area of limitation at the moment. Certainly it is my belief that people are very conscious of the amount of money petrol is costing them at the moment and, indeed, the cost of various other areas of energy. If they can be shown ways in which without undue inconvenience to them they can save money, and in the process save energy, I think they will respond. Their primary motivation may be to save money for their own pockets and that is not a bad motivation for anybody to have, but if it works that is all for the good. I am not saying that in no circumstances do I think there should be any mandatory or compulsory steps taken in the field of energy conservation. There are certain steps in fact being taken at present in regard to insulation requirements of new houses, for instance, which are in effect mandatory although not officially. But, in fact, they are mandatory because you cannot get a grant or a certificate of reasonable value unless the house complies with them.
It may be that certain other steps will have to be taken and that the field will have to be extended, but there is very great scope, quite apart from any mandatory actions, and I want to give that voluntary approach an opportunity before we get into the kind of areas that Senator Whitaker has in mind. One in particular he mentioned is rationing. I know from the way he said it he recognised that he was saying something that would shock some people. I recognised the motivation behind what he says but I am not at all convinced that this would be an effective approach. There are numerous difficulties in connection with rationing which suggest to me that it would not be effective except in circumstances in which there is a genuine shortage, but rationing simply to save energy and thereby reduce the deficit in the balance of payments I doubt is a real proposition with the general public.
Senator Keating made reference to understimates by State boards. I want to make it quite clear in case there is any misunderstanding, that nobody is blaming Bord na Móna because of underestimation. I mentioned in my introductory speech the factors which have increased the estimate of the cost of the third development programme. Some of them were Government decisions like, for instance, the decision to construct a briquette factory in Ballyforan. It was a very big addition to the sum. There were others that I mentioned. There may be other State bodies which have been blamed for grossly underestimating the capital cost of what they were engaged in but nobody is talking about Bord na Móna when that is being said.
Another area that concerned a number of people was the question of the use of cut-away bog, the ownership, and the manner in which it should be disposed of if it were to be disposed of. There were a few Senators who seemed to be of the opinion that it should be disposed of, if not to the original owners or their descendants, at least to persons, in the area, in the same way as land acquired by the Land Commission is disposed of. I want to make it quite clear that I do not subscribe to that view. It may be that that view would prevail in a certain limited number of cases for particular reasons which would apply locally or even for the reasons that Senator Keating advanced if one accepts it, that you need to get some very tough, hard, known farmers in there to apply the results of the research, in order to show that you can make it pay. On general principle, as far as I am concerned, the original owners have no claim whatever on this. First of all, Bord na Móna have acquired in fee simple from them. So they have no legal claim. Secondly, Bord na Móna have worked for years to produce something which is not what they bought, but which they are now finished with. Furthermore if they hand over the cut-away bog, having done nothing to it except cut away the turf, then whoever gets it is going to have to work hard and spend a good deal of money to make anything of it or it will go into a wilderness in a matter of a couple of years. We should not imagine that we are talking about vast areas of the best land going abegging. That is not the situation. As far as title is concerned, Bord na Móna holds it and until we make decisions on what we are doing with cut-away bogs, should continue to hold it on behalf of the State. The Joint Committee adverted to the difficulty of consolidation of title and what had been achieved by Bord na Móna's acquisition of this land and was against complicating the issue by going back on that consolidation. As regards the use, we should understand that there is still a great deal of experimental work to be done and it will be a considerable time before there are significant quantities of cut-away bogs available. There are possibilities of use as regards grassland, cereal production, vegetables, flowers or amenity area or biomass. We will probably end up using some areas for one thing and other areas for something else and so on. There is a lot more work to be done before we can really gauge what is most effective. One plug for biomass is that as long as we are short of energy this is producing a source of energy, a renewable source of energy, which is vitally important to us. A spin off from that is that it is providing employment in an area where the turf has been cut away. The people employed by Bord na Móna are, in the absence of other action, going to lose their jobs. I am putting that in simple terms. Bord na Móna is not going to leave it like that, as the House will understand. The point I want to make is that we are not in a position, and will not be for a considerable time, to make decisions on what is likely to be the best use for cut-away bogs. But we are making considerable progress in reaching the position where we can make these decisions.
Another area of concern and a matter to which I adverted in my introductory speech is the question of the exploitation of small bogs. Bord na Móna have, of course, exploited the large bogs, particularly in the midlands, which nobody else could have done. They are now engaged, particularly in the west of Ireland, as part of their third development programme, in the exploitation of much smaller bogs than they had been concerned with before.
Although we are still talking about what people other than Bord na Móna would regard as fairly sizeable bogs, Senators were talking about something smaller still. I am very concerned about those, too, because there is a huge area, a tremendous number of natural resources, available. We simply have to find a way to exploit them. Private enterprise, co-ops, and perhaps Bord na Móna partly—but that has to be examined—may be the way forward in exploiting this resource. Certainly Bord na Móna are prepared to provide, and at present do provide, advice and assistance to persons engaged in this activity. I am trying to draw the whole thing together to produce an overall workable scheme for the development of small bogs. My Department is at present engaged in consultations with various groups of people who are able to contribute in this area. What I am seeking to do is to see how best we can engage in the surveying of small bogs, drainage, in providing access roads, and in the avoidance of perimeter cutting.
Is there any way we can handle the problems that arise in regard to the title to some of these and the turbary rights held in commonage and the problems that arise there? Machinery and technical problems arise. The object of the consultations going on at the moment is to see how we can provide a programme that will best tackle these problems, at the same time giving assistance and encouragement to the kind of groups I have mentioned, to develop small bogs. I hope to be in a position in the not too distant future to announce a programme which will be designed to do just that.
The other major question which was raised was the Bord's pricing policy. Like Senator Mulcahy I was a little mystified at something Senator Cooney said about this. Senator Cooney is a member of the Joint Committee on State-Sponsored Bodies and, listening to him, it did not seem to me that he believed that there ought to be any change in the pricing policy of Bord na Móna.
In the report at paragraph 39, page 14, I find the following sentence:
In response to these arguments the Joint Committee concludes that the price of turf is currently too low and recommends that Bord na Móna be permitted to raise its prices.
It goes on in some detail as to why and how this should be done. I believe it is necessary for Bord na Móna to be allowed to charge something at least approaching an energy related price. That will involve an increase in price. Senator Cassidy was concerned that, if that happened, the quality should be increased. If the quality is not increased then it will not sell. It is a simple fact. If the price goes up and the quality does not and if people can get better value otherwise, then they will. It is important that we should not, in effect, have Bord na Móna subsidising the general consumer of turf. Apart from other reasons—I do not wish to delay the House by going into them—there is the question of capital development of Bord na Móna. The manner in which that capital development was financed in the past is changing. It has to be changed. It was primarily done by the Exchequer. In future it is going to be done primarily through the European Investment Bank.
Senator Brugha asked a question about that. In 1978-79, 77 per cent of Bord na Móna's milled peat went to the ESB and the balance went for briquetting; 29 per cent of sod peat went to the ESB and the balance for institutional and domestic purposes. As regards the interest rate payable to the EIB, I think it would be changed from time to time depending on current rates. It is an amalgam of a number of rates. At the moment it is in the region of 13 per cent. The basic requirement is that Bord na Móna should be able to operate on a commercial basis provided they have the capital they need and remunerate that capital. Anybody who examines the history of Bord na Móna will find that, on the one hand, they have not been allowed to operate on a purely commercial basis but, on the other hand, they have been assisted by the Exchequer in regard to capital and the rate of interest they have had to pay. Bord na Móna have been misrepresented or are capable of being misrepresented as not being a viable operation. They should be and should be seen to be and, indeed, are, a viable operation. The only way that can be achieved is to allow the board to operate on a proper market basis as regards the price of the goods they sell.
No doubt, I have omitted a number of points made by Senators but I hope I have dealt with the major themes raised by a number of Senators. I appreciate and fully agree with all the tributes that have been paid to Bord na Móna in the House by Senators. The board have done a wonderful job. I want to join too with the Senators who paid tribute to those who had the vision to set up Bord na Móna. I was a little disturbed to hear Senator Markey say—no doubt he believes, but I think he is mistaken— that what really forced us to develop the bog was the second world war. If Bord na Móna had not existed when the second world war broke out and if the effort had not been made, if the vision was not there, if the money had not been sunk in it to get it going, it would have been too late. It was because they were there that they were able, with a lot of difficulty, to function when the second world war came along. That was due to the fact that there were people of vision before that. They were marvellous people. I wish today all of us were equally capable of that kind of vision. At least we are capable of recognising what was achieved and of pointing the way forward. That is what Senators on all sides of the House have tried to do in their contribution to this Bill. For this I thank them.
