A Conservative spokesman has accused the Stormont enterprise minister of doing “too little, too late”, about energy costs for Northern Ireland’s manufacturers. Frank Shivers, a Bangor businessman and the party’s election candidate for North Down, welcomed Jonathan Bell’s decision to appoint an ‘advisory group’ to tackle the subject, but added that “Executive policy has for far too long been letting people employed in manufacturing down.”
“Mr. Bell has now appointed a group to look at energy costs, and while this action is welcome, Conservatives urged the Executive to seek expert advice and adopt a policy on electricity pricing well over a year ago”, Frank observed. “It’s taken the loss of nearly 900 jobs in the Michelin plant in Ballymena to get this issue back on the agenda, never mind seeing some action taken. It’s been blatantly obvious for a long time that energy costs were crippling the competitiveness of industry in Northern Ireland and the effect is exacerbated by an arbitrary, unrealistic target to generate 40% of our electricity through renewable resources, by 2020”.
“Albeit belatedly, the Executive needs to commission expert advice about setting a more achievable target. There are also serious doubts about relying upon wind power to achieve Northern Ireland’s goals, in terms of renewables. More needs to be done to include hydro, tidal, anaerobic digestion and geothermal in the renewables mix. Most of all, ministers need to concentrate on driving down costs, by reducing the margins and surcharges paid to generators, rather than focusing only on changing how energy is supplied. It’s far too late for workers who were made redundant by Michelin and other manufacturers, but it’s something the Executive needs to address, to stop even more jobs being lost”.