Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said this morning that Enemalta had done well to involve other authorities in the investigation of last week's power outage.
To have a country lose power after so much effort was made to attract new investment, and when the country had been judged to be the most advanced in European e-government services was no joke, Dr Gonzi said. He said one investor had told him that a power cut of one hour cost him €5 million in turnover.
He said he did not know whether the outage was caused by a technical fault or sabotage. But it was worth recalling how three years ago, there was a major outage when Enemalta was to be discussed in Parliament. The same happened in June when Enemalta was also on the parliamentary agenda, and again last week, a few hours after the corporation's chairman was interviewed on PBS and shortly before he (Dr Gonzi) was to reply to the budget speech.
Coincidences happened, Dr Gonzi said, but what had happened had to be objectively investigated, not least to avoid a repetition.
He said that no sabotage had resulted in the investigation in the power cut in June. But even if there was no sabotage, he said, Malta needed to always have a guaranteed power supply. The best solution would be to have a cable to Sicily which would avoid such a situation - since the outage was caused when a fault at Marsa power station had a ripple effect on Delimara station.
Malta, he said, should not depend on just one system of power generation. Neither should it depend on just one fuel - one could see what happened to Eastern Europe last year when gas supplies were interrupted, for example. The best solution would be gas, fuel oil, inter-connector to Sicily and wind farms, he said.
Dr Gonzi said it was hoped that the inter-connector would start being used in 2013 or 2014, leading to the shutting down of Marsa power station, which would sharply reduce Malta's emissions, something which was also very important.
In other points raised by Dr Gonzi, who was being interviewed at the PN club in Lija, Dr Gonzi said no decision had been taken yet on who would be nominated to serve as European Commissioner and the issue would be discussed in the Cabinet. The decision would be announced at the appropriate time.
Replying to another question, Dr Gonzi said no decision had been taken yet on the future use of the former St Luke's Hospital. This, he said, was a prime site and the government hoped to attract foreign investment to it. One therefore, had to monitor international economic developments to make the best decision. He also pointed out that part of Karin Grech Hospital is being used as a rehabilitation facility until new facilities are built.
On the Mepa audit-officer, Dr Gonzi said he respected the auditor, but he expected that the auditor to respect other institutions. No institution should jump into the shoes of another institution as that would harm democracy.
What would happen if he was to start criticising the judges when they applied the law? Dr Gonzi said he was surprised that Joseph Muscat was taking a different position and claiming omerta'. This recalled how the old Labour government, when they disagreed with a court decision, had shuffled the judges.
Dr Gonzi said he respected the auditor when he carried out his role to investigate matters related to Mepa but this case applied to a decision taken by a Magistrate.