Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I welcome the new Minister of State and wish him luck in his portfolio. To answer the question put by Robert Watt, the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, to the national economic dialogue, "Where would you save?", one immediate saving we should make is to shut down our petroleum services division. It would not result in a huge saving but there is no moral way we as a State can continue to look for oil and gas when we know that four-fifths of known fossil fuel resources now have to stay in the ground. Oil at $100 a barrel will not be viable.

On a moral and a pure leadership basis, we cannot continue to take oil out of the ground. There is no case for new exploration and we should shut it down. We should not award the 2015 Atlantic margin oil and gas licensing rounds. We should be honest with the developers. We should set ourselves out as a divestment State. This divestment movement is growing across the world in universities, churches and social groups. We have to stop looking for oil and gas, so that is the first saving I would make. We have fine people in the Department and I have nothing against them at all but purely on moral grounds, the Minister cannot sign the licences. If he signs them, then we will not divest and will burn our planet. We cannot do it and we have to stop.