Minister Gets On Bike To Promote Energy Conservation

New Minister For Communications, Energy And Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, Sets An Example From Day One

According to the new Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, Irish citizens must cut their energy use to cope with rising bills and international obligations to cut carbon emissions.

Delivering his message, the newly-appointed Green Party Minister cycled to his Adelaide Road office in Dublin yesterday after leaving the Dáil.

"I prefer to cycle because it is quicker to get from here to the Dáil on a bike than in a car. I don't live that far away," he told reporters waiting for him in the street.

"It is the quickest way around this city. The Met Office told us a few years ago that if you cycle to work every day there are only eight days a year when it rains. Today is one of them," he continued.

He also emphasised that, as the Minister dealing with energy, he felt obligated to "lead by example. I won't be doing it every day. There are times I'll be driving, times on the bus, times on the train, times on the bike.

"That is something I would like to do, subject to it being practical."

"We face a real crisis in energy. We face long-term challenges with oil and gas peaking.

"We need to cut back on use. We have to start in every aspect of our society and Government to see what we can do for that. That is a challenge that I am looking forward to."

"The public are opening up their gas bills and are shocked when they see them, so the public want to cut back. I would say that is the first priority."

"We are very close all the time to not having enough power. Tackling that challenge will be one of the first things that I can work on.

"Every six months we are using more power to the equivalent of Ardnacrusha power plant which once supplied the whole country.

"If we can start cutting back the growth in energy use while not cutting back the services, by being more energy efficient, that will have a huge effect," he said.

"We are one of the most oil-dependent countries. Every day we each use about seven pints of oil in heating, transport, industrial processing.

"It is not going to run out overnight. There will still be oil for the next 30, 40 years. But once it peaks it starts to decline 3 per cent per year after that. That is going to make it very expensive, very volatile.

"So we need to wean ourselves off that dependency. If we achieve it we will also meet our climate change challenge, cutting back our emissions by roughly two-thirds as well," he concluded.