Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The current laws are adequate. It is just that the practice has been very widespread.

The Revenue Commissioners are of the view that it is decreasing. If they have prima facieevidence or even a suspicion that a particular station is selling laundered diesel or illegal fuel of some sort, they follow it up. They are not standing back and saying, "We know the names and addresses of 120 petrol stations that we think are trading in illegal fuel and we are not acting". They closed 120 and they continue that work. The first source of their information would be following the supply chain. If 4,000 litres or 5,000 litres of diesel are being delivered to some country cottage with a shed at the back every week, one does not need to be Sherlock Holmes to be suspicious that they are not using it for the lawnmower. Getting the information on the supply chain has been very effective.
They also work in another way. If somebody like Deputy Creed had his engine destroyed, he would think about where he might have got the fuel. Some people report to the Revenue Commissioners that their engine was destroyed as a result of getting fuel in a particular filling station. They will follow that up as well. They have no reluctance to follow up.
Petrol stretching relates more to gifted amateurs and local criminals, but diesel laundering is part of the national conspiracy we inherited from the Troubles in the North to a very large degree. It is more prevalent in Border counties than elsewhere, but it has also spread right into the south of the country. They own diesel trucks that ply the roads of the Republic and deliver to stations. They may own a petrol station or may lease it. There may be a former sympathiser who is now owning or leasing it. The Revenue Commissioners are trying to break into that network. It is not always easy to do so but they will continue to do so. The proofs are difficult, but the marker should be easy.
My amateur understanding of this is as follows. The marker was a coloured dye in green diesel or red diesel and the laundering simply washed out the dye using a chemical process. The diesel then looked legitimate. It did not look like home heating oil or agricultural diesel. We went through a phase where as they kept changing markers, the process of laundering kept changing as well.
In the past two years, they did some serious scientific research. I remember telling members two or three years ago that they had a very good marker and they found that if the diesel was stored in plastic containers for some reason or other, the contact between the plastic and the marker acted as a kind of antidote and nullified the marker so that did not work. However, they have tested this rigorously in the way one tests scientific products. They are quite optimistic that when they introduce this new marker on 31 March 2015 it will be successful, but the campaign goes on.