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Where the Coalition differ. Eirgrid
Read more about: Energy, Fine Gael, Green Party, Labour Party
I have been meaning to get back to the Manifesto Checking of the Government parties. But I have been busy. However here is a quick comparrison of where the Greens Labour and Fine Gael disagree. Eirgrid.
From Labour
The Labour Party and myself are totally opposed to any break-up of the ESB or the atomisation of the company and its core grid and generation assets. The proposal to remove the transmission system from the ESB is unnecessary for competition and threatens the long-term national interest and energy security of the Irish people.
From the Greens
The Government has yet to give a clear answer as to why it is not transferring the ownership of the electricity transmission network into Eirgrid as recommended in the report by Deloitte consultants.
“We agree with the conclusion of the report that the ESB needs to be maintained as a strong company held in public ownership. However, we see no reason why the company has to maintain ownership of the transmission lines. Eirgrid is supposed to be fully independent from the ESB and it was announced yesterday that it will have ownership of the new east-west interconnector. There is no obvious reason why the transfer of the other transmission assets would affect the ability of the ESB to maintain a strong generation and supply business.
From Fine Gael
Fine Gael Spokesperson on Energy, Bernard Durkan TD, has welcomed Noel Dempsey’s belated acceptance of Fine Gael policy to separate the ESB from the National Grid (EirGrid) to facilitate increased competition in the sector. Deputy Durkan was commenting on today’s launch of the Government’s Green White Paper on Energy.
So FG and Greens Agree while Labour Disagree
And they call themselves an alternative govt? Of course the transmission system needs to be separated from the ESB. Otherwise ESB has a conflict of interest between competing for customers on the one hand, while being able - like Eircom - to deny competitors access to the transmission network. Labour’s position is motivated by a desire to protect the power of the ESB unions. Remember Labour is funded by the unions. They will always come first for Labour, even though only 1/3rd of the workforce is a trade unionist.
I’m more sympathetic to Labour on this one. Just splitting the ESB into power generation & grid means that you’ve two sequential monopolies along the chain instead of one owning the whole thing. Of itself it doesn’t guarantee competition. And the generator can still make life difficult for everyone down the line by squeezing power supply. I think everyone agrees that a competitor for generation (e.g. if Northern Ireland Electricity came in) would help — and then of course you’d want to be sure that the grid is giving them equal access. But that could achieved by tough regulation of the grid rather than an actual sell-off. Nevertheless I agree totally with BB that Labour has a major vested interest backer in this row — the workers in ESB.
P O’Neill, we already have a dress-rehearsal for how effective “regulation” is in terms of ensuring access to competitors. Look at Eircom. The problem there wasn’t privatisation - rather it was the fact that Eircom retained control of the local-loop. The Communications Regulator has failed dismally to promote competition in the telecoms sector. The lesson is that a competitor should not retain control of something that other competitors in the market require to compete on an equal footing and that can only mean separating the transmission system from ESB. The underlying issue here is competition and retaining the status-quo gives the ESB an unfair advantage relative to competitors - constituting a barrier-to-entry and therefore a disincentive for ESB to cut prices - hence we have among the highest electricity bills in Europe. And the result of that is the exodus of multinationals that has just started and would by the sounds of things, get worse with Labour and its statist ideology in power.