Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We were not long gone from the Dáil in July when the Minister of State made an announcement that he was licensing an exploration in the Porcupine Basin for gas and oil to Tony O'Reilly Jnr. I have not been a Deputy for too long but I have never felt as gutted as when I heard this. It was a kick in the face to do this when we had shut down and the committee and the Dáil had gone. The Minister of State made the announcement without flagging it to us in advance, and this is part of a policy that flies in the face of everything we have been talking about in respect of climate change, saving the planet and delivering on our targets. Any old eejit in science could tell us we need to stop extracting fossil fuels, but the Minister of State has licensed an exploration in the Porcupine Basin where there may be twice as much as in Corrib, despite the latest results which do not look good but about which I am not convinced.

If it is in the ground, leave it there. That is the general philosophy for dealing with climate change but we seem to have every intention of extracting it. On top of that, we have passed an anti-fracking Bill, which effectively meant we should leave something in the ground if it was on land. There was serious opposition to an amendment that would have extended the Bill to offshore resources, with people saying it would delay the Bill, which was sponsored by Fine Gael and supported by us. Doing so would have meant the plan to grant this licence, which was already signed, sealed and delivered and announced after the Dáil closed, would have been scuppered. It is extremely disappointing and flies in the face of any attempt to deal with climate change in this country, so I ask the Minister of State for an explanation. I had a question for him yesterday but I was not able to be in the Dáil when the Minister of State took questions, although I believe Deputy Boyd Barrett took one of the questions for me. I got a written answer from the Minister of State but it does not address my question at all. Will he explain why this was done in the way it was done, and why he thinks it is okay to allow oil and gas companies to explore for further extraction of fossil fuels from our shores?