Oil-firedbuilding plan to be raised in Dáil

Plans by the Office of Public Works (OPW) to install an exclusively oil-fired heating system in Government buildings currently under construction in Buncrana, Co Donegal, are to be raised in the Dáil and Seanad by Sinn Féin next week.

The buildings will house offices for the Department of Social and Family Affairs and a new Garda station for Buncrana.

Sinn Féin Senator Pearse Doherty described it as "amazing" and "crazy" that the Government should agree to new offices being heated by oil at a time when it was itself "preaching about saving energy and protecting the environment".

This was even more the case when an alternative environmentally friendly, cost-efficient source of heating was available from the Inishowen-based Ecowood company which specialises in providing wood-chip fuels from within the biomass industry, he said.

Ecowood supplies woodchip fuel and heating systems to the new Ikea store in Belfast and the new Letterkenny Regional Sports Centre.

Ecowood contacted local Sinn Féin councillor Padraig Mac Lochlainn on the matter. He commented that it was "absolutely astonishing that at a time when issues like global warming, peak oil and the Kyoto principles dominate news across the world, that our Government - a Government that for the first time ever includes the Green Party - continues to allow major Government buildings to be heated by oil-fired systems."

A spokesman for the OPW defended the decision to install an exclusively oil-fired heating system at Buncrana.

He said that all options were examined but for practical reasons an oil-fired system was deemed best.