Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegates from the EPA. Having said that, I do not think we should be here. This is a personal as well as a political issue for me. Senator Paschal Mooney lives close to the area most immediately threatened by fracking, but I practically live in it. I know the real fear people have as we discuss the matter coldly and scientifically. I am not a scientist or an engineer, but I am a person who is passionate about the beautiful unspoilt landscape of north Leitrim and County Fermanagh.

One could not have picked a more beautiful part of the country to set out to destroy and it hurts me that members are obliged to sit here and discuss mechanisms that might tell them it will be all right to destroy this landscape and to destroy the livelihoods, health and well-being of those who live in this landscape. This is why I believe members should not be here.

The request to submit expressions of interest was sent out by the Government's predecessor and I must state that had I been in the Oireachtas at the time, I certainly would have tried to block it. There was no public discussion and no Dáil debate over it. I have used freedom of information requests, parliamentary questions, telephone calls and meetings with civil servants to try to establish what was the trigger to issue those advertisements seeking expressions of interest. I cannot get such a trigger point and one need not be cynical to assume that somewhere in the midst of all that off-the-record discussion and debate, extensive lobbying was going on in behalf of the energy industry. I find it extraordinary that those requests for expressions of interest and exploratory licences were issued in the dying days of the previous Administration, not just here but in Stormont as well. That is not and cannot be a coincidence. There is a puppeteer with a hand up a glove some place in all of this. I simply have not been able to identify what person, company or companies are lobbying the group and who is the puppeteer in this regard. I will park this issue now for the present.

Mr. Lynott has used the word "independent" at least four, if not five, times in his presentation. CDM Smith is a cheerleader for the fracking industry and no reasonable person will place any credit in any report for which it is leading the consortium engaged by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, in this regard. It is on the record as being cheerleaders for the fracking industry and neither I nor anyone else will place the slightest credibility in a report that comes out from a consortium led by CDM Smith. It was an extraordinary decision to engage CDM Smith and I do not care what it has signed as that is what it does. This is what its shareholders expect it to do, namely, to get fracking into Europe, the United States and Ireland. That is how it makes its money. It is not doing this for what it is getting from us or from Stormont, which it would regard as a pittance. Are these people acting in the interest of those who I represent in the north west of Ireland or are they acting in the interests of their shareholders? The answer is clear. What I consider to be extraordinary is that any Government agency would expect the likes of me and the people I represent to believe it could be independent as it cannot. I do not care how many Chinese walls are in place; Chinese walls are paper walls.