Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On the first point raised by the Deputy about oil and gas, I do not wish to misrepresent him but he was querying why we would continue with oil and gas at all. The White Paper will emphasise that we are in a transition. There will not be a moment next year, the year after or almost certainly for as long as any of us might have a chance of being in this House that we will be able to say that we have turned off the tap on all of the fossil fuels or that we will no longer have any reliance on them. We will have a reliance but it will be a reducing reliance on fossil fuels in the years and decades ahead. It will be a considerable period of decades before we can say that about oil and gas but particularly gas because it is much cleaner-----