Dr. Aedín McLoughlin:

I will first deal with Senator Mooney's question about whether I was encouraged by the Department and the EPA. I would not say I was encouraged. What I heard was what I expected, because we know that this is what is happening. There is a grey area emerging where the company is talking about one kind of timeline and the officials are talking about another. That is made even more complicated by the fact that it is over the Border as well, which is contiguous with ourselves.

With regard to not allowing anything to go forward, I am not sure that the licences will be rendered void by this. I can only assume that an extension will be required. We need more attention to be paid to policy in the entire area and to look at not only the technical aspects of it but also the human aspects.

When talking about hydraulic fracturing I specifically said that high volume hydraulic fracturing should be prohibited. The reason is that all the evidence coming from where this is taking place shows that it is not a safe technology. Personally, and not speaking on behalf of the campaign, I think that if there is a new technology that might examine the production of gas in a completely different way, perhaps for the good of the community and not to have it produced suddenly with huge industry and probably just going into the international store of gas rather than have it used by the people, we could be talking about a completely different scenario. That is why high volume hydraulic fracturing should be prohibited, but not the research into what could be the future development of gas production. There is no doubt we all need and use gas and know its benefits.

Being optimistic, I believe that the geology is different in Ireland and, as a result, it might well be found it is not worth it. I agree with the Senator in that regard.

Deputy Colreavy spoke about the community. There is an extraordinary situation in the local area wherever this fracking is proposed, that is, Clare, Leitrim and Fermanagh. The people on the ground are really united behind a call to stop this process and many of them are talking about banning fracking. The reason is that people are very afraid of what might happen to their land, communities and health. To refer back to the slide on health, somebody said that if we do not know what the long-term effects are, perhaps that was a contradiction of what I said. In fact, the short-term effects of what was in that slide are effects on people. This is happening now. People are going to the doctors and the hospitals with all of these illnesses. We know the long-term effects of the chemicals but if one looks at the communities, it takes more than seven years for certain diseases to appear. We are now beginning to see the cancers emerging and the other longer-term effects on human health. We do not know the extent of those but we know how the beginning looks.

Another question was about if there were guarantees that the technology was okay. Unfortunately, at present there are more disasters than technology advances in this field. There is a great deal going on but given the technology as it is now, the proposal that is made is unacceptable in our view. I will ask Eddie Mitchell to add his comments.