Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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My concern is that we are putting all this effort and resources into an industry which we should allow to die because it is the greatest threat to our future in terms of pollution. Exploration of these wells costs approximately €100 million a pop, that being the cost of the Dunquin field a number of years ago. There is no investment by the Department in offshore wind in the same seas. Wind is our greatest resource. We do not need exploration; we know it is there. How is it that all this money is being spent on petroleum exploration yet no drilling is taking place and, at the same time, no work is being done on capturing an energy resource that everybody knows is going to be the future for energy? Why are we investing in the dead resource rather than the new one?