asked the Minister for Industry, Commerce and Energy the measures, if any, being introduced to encourage industry to conserve energy, in view of the importance of national energy conservation; if his attention has been drawn to a recent report (details supplied) on the IIRS energy management activities; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Industrial Energy Conservation.
13.
My Department provide grants of up to 33? per cent to manufacturing and service industry towards the cost of engaging consultants to carry out fuel efficiency surveys. The Industrial Development Authority provide grants towards expenditure on machinery, equipment, instrumentation and modifications in buildings designed to achieve savings in energy. The authority also provide grants towards the costs of research and development projects by manufacturing firms involving a significant technical input aimed at conserving energy.
I have seen the report to which the Deputy has referred. The projects mentioned in the report are being carried out by the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards at the request of my Department. The projects provide for the preparation of educational and energy management manuals for six energy intensive industrial sectors and are directed towards small and mediumsized undertakings in particular. Seminars for the individual sectors were held throughout the country, consisting basically of a series of lectures illustrating the management and technical aspects of energy economy. The manuals published by the IIRS have been highly praised abroad and I regret the fact that they have received less attention from industrialists in Ireland than they deserve.
In addition, the institute have carried out a study to assess the relative merits of different options for building construction and space heating systems from an energy conservation viewpoint. The results of this study will be published shortly and should be of particular interest to the building construction industry.
Additional funds are being provided for energy conservation this year and I hope to announce further initiatives in the promotion of this objective at a later stage. The importance of energy conservation has already been emphasised in the discussion document on our energy needs which was published last year, and the Deputy may be assured that it will at all times receive full recognition in the formulation of our energy policies. More immediately, it is my intention in the coming weeks to endeavour to bring home to all consumers of energy, whether industrial, commercial or domestic, the vital need to conserve supplies in order to ensure that no serious disruption of economic activity will be caused by current shortages.
Would the Minister consider the preparation of similar handbooks for normal domestic energy conservation? The ones to which he referred are particularly valuable but they are related specially to industrial sectors. Is the Minister satisfied that industry is giving sufficiently urgent attention to the task at the present time?
A certain amount of information has already been made available in regard to domestic consumers. It was thought appropriate that intensive study of this kind should start with heavy industrial users because, proportionately, they use a great deal of energy. It is disappointing that the response to this work has been a great deal less than one would have wished. I can only hope that the sectors concerned, which are food and drink, dairy engineering, textile, chemical, ceramics and clay, would pay more attention to these manuals and to the results of the work which has been done. I will certainly bear in mind, when this work and the other work which I mentioned in regard to the construction industry and space heating systems have been completed by the IIRS, that they might then approach some different aspects of domestic energy conservation.
Are the initiatives which the Minister has in mind, and which he has said he will be announcing shortly, of a merely exhortatory kind or will they be initiatives with teeth?
They will likely be a combination of both. It is difficult, as the Deputy will appreciate, to bring in, at relatively short notice, initiatives with teeth which will interfer with existing economic activity and perhaps interfere with it seriously. I have in mind, for instance, ensuring that the IDA would not give grants in future for any new industrial project or a re-equipment grant for an existing one unless the various rules which were laid down by the IIRS in those manuals are complied with. One of the areas in which one would like, as rapidly as possible, to introduce regulations which would have teeth is in regard to the building construction industry. That is one of the areas where the amount of wastage at the moment is greatest. These rules alredy exist in respect of publicity erected houses and I understand that the Minister for the Environment has now made similar rules to come into effect from 1 July next in regard to privately built houses. I had urged that these rules would be brought in at a much earlier date than 1 July next but this was found, unfortunately, not to be feasible because of the time lags that are involved in building and so forth.
Would the Minister accept that the sections of the Green Paper, to which he referred in his reply, dealing with conservation do not contain one single concrete proposal on this topic?
We dealt with that matter already here and it did not purport to contain any such proposals. It was a matter which, I stated, had to be dealt with and it is in the process of being dealt with now. There are, as the Deputy will appreciate, numerous regulations that I could make tomorrow morning which would certainly save energy but many members of the public would question whether such regulations should be made in the absence of an absolutely clear need to make them, because they would interfere not alone with economic activity but with general social activity too.
I sympathise with the Minister's hesitancy in that regard but the Minister has repeatedly said in recent weeks that the continued dependence of the country on oil imports in view of recent events is becoming more and more impossible. Surely we are reaching a situation in which the Minister will have to put his reservations about social convenience behind him and do something concrete.
It is not just social convenience. By far the greatest reservation I have relates to economic activity.
Is the Minister aware of the difficulties being experienced at the moment by importers of domestic and industrial heating oil supplies? Is the Minister also aware that a quota has been imposed——
A Cheann Comhairle, the question relates to the publication by the IIRS of industry manuals, not to imports of oil.
Will the Minister comment on an immediate problem from which a lot of people are suffering in industry? With the use of domestic oil for private heating——
We are getting into a wide field now.
We are dealing with energy which is very important at the moment. Would the Minister comment, because grave difficulty is being experienced——
The Ceann Comhairle is being exhausted too.
The Ceann Comhairle will be aware that I rarely hold up the House in this manner but because this is an important energy question——
The Deputy cannot hold the House up with irrelevancies.
(Interruptions.)
It is very relevant at the moment. The Minister is trying to slide from under a very important question.