Cabinet Reshuffle.

national | sci-tech | opinion/analysis Sunday July 25, 2004 17:24 by Sean Crudden - Cooley Environmental and Health Group sean.crudden at iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 042 93 71310

Is this serious or is it a circus?

Government policy seems to boil down to a mish-mash of ideas about competition, privatisation - and really a dash of laissez-faire mentality about public services. However there seems to be a bit of old-fashioned loyalty to state enterprise and social policy generally. Have the PDs already produced - through their ally Charlie McCreevy - an irreversible and seismic shift in public policy. Or is the political pendulum beginning inexorably to swing back in the opposite direction?

For the last hour or two I have been reading in the Sunday Independent (the source and origin of most of my scant knowledge of current affairs) about the "form" in the race for position in the cabinet reshuffle which unavoidably arises out of Charlie McCreevey’s appointment as Ireland’s new European commissioner. To tell you the truth I scarcely remember who even the "certainties" are.

No. The point that eludes me is the scarcity of comment on the position of energy in the whole circus. At the time of the formation of the present government (in 2001?) Bertie Ahern gave a "new" department the title of "Communications, Marine, Energy and Natural Resources." When Dermot Ahern was given the Ministry he was prevented from dropping (which he wanted to do) the title "Marine" by fisheries interests but he succeeded in dropping the "Energy" part of the title without even, as far as I can remember, a word of protest.

Naturally, in spite of titular tinkering, his department has been in charge of energy policy in the intervening few years and I have no idea whether he has been doing a good job or not.

Now I think the time has come to be more up-front about energy - for it is something which concerns the ordinary joe soap like myself - as well as a large section of the business and transport community for which it is of key importance. Could we have a minister for energy in the new cabinet? The very least that is necessary in 2004, in my humble opinion, is a dedicated junior ministry of energy.

I doubt if Signor Barroso is a reader of these pages but someone should whisper in his ear a similar suggestion in connection with the line-up in the new European Commission.

My own opinion is that energy policy is underdeveloped everywhere in the world. The energy ministry in Ireland and the energy division in the European Commission would be doing a service if they could quantify (or at least create an estimate of) the extent of the problems involved.

Building (if possible) a robust policy for the future might emerge logically and progressively from the provisions I am seeking now which invlove - and this in an ordinary layman’s opinion - only elementary foresight.