Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am not dismissing anything. The Deputy is dismissing the planning process. Suppose we had the EPA study and it said the technology is perfectly safe, a developer came along and there was a project. It would have to go through the whole environmental impact assessment, including the impact on human life and the human impact. The hoops that have to be jumped through are extremely rigorous and demanding. I have no wish to do anything other than preserve the natural beauty of the area in which the Deputy is fortunate to live, and he knows that. All I am saying to him is that it is my duty to take the expert advice available to me in preparation for European Council meetings where issues come up on the agenda and where we need to put an Irish perspective. I have explained in Europe that we are not engaged in any hydraulic fracturing and that we are doing a professional scientific study on the safety of the technology and its environmental impacts and so on. That is all I am saying.