Mr. Alan Hooper:

We did examine the work done in New York State and other states in America. One of the big problems, which to an extent returns us to the Department's comment, is that the Americans did not do any baseline work before they started, which makes it very hard to know what was caused by fracking. Ireland is right. It was a good study to have carried out before anything was put in the ground. The lack of baseline data does make life very difficult and it invalidates much of the information available because researchers do not know what they are comparing against. It is also very site specific. The geology of New York State is very different from that of Ireland. It is seismically much more active than Ireland; therefore, there would probably be a lot more fractured rock than here. One of the big problems, which brings us back to Deputy Eamon Ryan's point about water pollution, is that it depends on the underground geology, hydrogeology and fracturing. Those data are not available. It is not possible to say if there are or are not many fractures. That piece of information is vital in the assessment of the risk.