Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I hope progress in this area will be exponential.

When this legislation is in place I hope the Minister, when he is representing the State at the European Union or in a broader international forum, will be in a stronger position to argue for safety standards globally in regard to oil and gas exploration. We are well aware that there are countries with no proper regulation where people's lives are at risk as a consequence of untrammeled greed. The safety measures that are required, particularly in the developing world, are simply not in place.

Recent media reports indicated that the Ugandan Government has given permission to Tullow Oil to flare gas in that country. Flaring gas has the potential to release huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The flaring of gas in Nigeria is regarded as the greatest source of CO2 emissions in sub-Saharan Africa. That has an impact in the developed world but, when one considers the impact of climate change, it is the poor areas that suffer most. Now we discover that a company with Irish links is part of the problem in a naked way. I hope we will now be able to argue that case with more authority. When one considers the global agreements that are in place for opening up markets internationally, the other side of the story is that these companies must be controlled and regulated in a way that ensures that whether one lives in Ireland, Uganda or elsewhere, one's health is protected.

A non-governmental organisation in Britain called PLATFORM has carried out a worrying assessment of the situation. It points out that where regulatory frameworks are weak, the danger of flaring of gas becomes a major issue and urges that the absence of an oil production regulatory regime not be exploited by big business. The report states:

Urgent changes should be made to the contracts, legislation and regulatory regime covering oil to achieve a measure of environmental protection, minimise economic distortion through revenue flows and capture a more appropriate share of the revenues. Uganda is heading towards oil production in 2010-11 with no oil legislation in place and no revenue management system and is locked into contracts that undermine the country's sovereign control over its natural resource.

The report goes on to criticise the financial arrangements in place in Uganda. These issues are not as stark in this State as they are in the developing world. However, we can, with reference to the tax regime, question whether Ireland, as opposed to the local community in Mayo, is seeing the benefits of the exploration and exploitation of our natural resources. We have a responsibility to address, whenever we have a responsibility to do so, in international fora the shortcomings that exist in the developing world.

It is not long since we were ourselves neglectful in a way that now seems extraordinarily remiss. Some days ago a deputation of miners from Arigna, Ballingarry and Castlecomer attended a meeting of the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. These men were perhaps slightly older than the Minister of State, Deputy Conor Lenihan, but not much. They had gone out to work in the 1960s as healthy young boys and now they are broken and sick men as a result of the work they did on behalf of us all. It is not often that a deputation makes as great an impact as these men, many of whom are suffering from lung disease and heart disease, as well as blindness and tinnitus because of the impact of explosions. It is extraordinary that in our generation these men have had to suffer in this way because health and safety precautions were grossly inadequate.

The State has a responsibility to these men but it seems determined to see them die before it lives up to that responsibility. The mining companies were private companies and are no longer in existence. Where else can these men turn but to the State? They have already been poorly treated by the social welfare system. This is a reminder that although we may consider ourselves a highly developed and sophisticated economy with high standards in health and safety, we only have to look into the faces of those miners, or consider the number of men who died during the construction mania, to realise it is very superficial.

This Bill represents an important and welcome step forward in seeking to protect communities and the environment. Some of the issues it confronts were raised in turbulent times. The corrosive Corrib gas dispute has raised genuine issues to which the State has been slow to respond. The Government is now responding and I hope that at the end of the process in which we are engaged we will have robust legislation which protects people into the future even if we were not able to protect them in the past.

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