Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate my constituency colleague on her appointment as chair of the committee.

The natural resources section comprises petroleum services, mining services and Geological Survey of Ireland, GSI, services. The Department’s role in petroleum services includes developing and maintaining an appropriate policy and regulatory framework to underpin oil and gas exploration and production activities, including engagement at national, EU and wider international level, together with the development of the legislation focused on safety, protection of the environment and fiscal terms. The International Energy Agency forecasts that oil and natural gas will remain significant in the world’s energy supply to 2035, and there are significant and sustained benefits to the State and people of Ireland over an extended period of years for oil and petroleum found here.

Mining is undertaken by private industry either under State mining leases for State-owned minerals or State mining licences for privately owned minerals. Ireland ranks as Europe’s second largest producer of zinc metal in concentrate and the eleventh largest producer in the world. In addition, Ireland is Europe’s fifth largest producer of lead metal in concentrate and sixteenth in the world. In terms of the challenges in the Department, there is an extensive programme of remediation works at five of the six identified former mining sites, particularly Silvermines in County Tipperary and Avoca.

The GSI is a division of the Department which does excellent work and acts as the State geosites agency. It manages several nationally strategic initiatives through a few programme budgets which have been amalgamated into a single subhead. There is the Tellus programme, the geological environmental baseline survey, with aircraft flying at 60 m surveying the Galway west area and providing very important data, and Integrated Mapping for the sustainable development of Ireland's Marine Resource, INFOMAR, which is the national seabed mapping programme. INFOMAR will commence phase 2 of the mapping of all remaining areas not already mapped in phase 1 to complete 100% coverage of all Irish waters. There is a significant amount of good work being done, particularly in the GSI’s research strategy.