Professor Pat Shannon:

The Deputy has asked a number of questions. One concerned discoveries and geological thinking. There have been major advances in geological thinking over the past decade or so. That has been backed up by new ways of thinking about how oil and gas are generated and trapped. New data has allowed us to see some of the sub-surface in three dimensions. For many years companies tried to find analogues to discoveries in the North Sea. It was mentioned earlier in the debate that in recent years people have begun to think that perhaps the real comparators are on the other side of the Atlantic, off the Jeanne D'arc and the Flemish Pass basins, where new discoveries have been made. Our thinking has changed radically. It is not true to say that everything has been looked for. Evidence for that is that in the last licensing round a significant number of new, major companies came to Ireland for the first time. A number of those have been involved in exploration off the Canadian coast. That suggests that there is real prospectivity and a new way of geological thinking that is actually quite different.