Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

Yesterday evening, the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources in his contribution stated that in his experience the motion before him was the worst he had the pleasure of having to respond to in this House. The Government's amendment to this motion happens to be the worst I have had the pleasure of having to witness in my short time in the House.

The amendment is nothing but a series of back-clapping and false assertions about the Government's position on the existence or otherwise of an energy policy. The amendment calls on Dáil Éireann to recognise "that the development of lreland's natural resources benefits the citizen of the State". It is hard to know whether that is a hope or an aspiration because it certainly is not a fact.

The amendment calls on Dáil Éireann to recognise "that the present fiscal terms for petroleum are based on the present perception of prospectivity in Offshore Ireland and recognise that we compete with other jurisdictions for exploration investment". That is nonsense. That is to state that every country has oil and gas deposits and we compete on which gets explored first. We live in a world of fast-diminishing fossil fuel resources and wherever they can be found there will be prospectors. The cards have always been in the Government's hand and it has always chosen to use them unwisely.

The amendment states that Dáil Éireann recognises "that the State is in receipt of royalties in relation to its major production facility at Kinsale", at last a fact. However, it does not explain why any subsequent oil and gas find here has had worse royalty returns to the State than we had in the original gas find in Kinsale.

The amendment continues to state that we recognise "that the completion of a comprehensive (and expensive) work programme is a requirement of frontier licences and failure to complete such a programme will result in either relinquishment or revocation of the licence". It seems to imply that at some time in the future, if the exploration companies have not done their jobs, the licences will be removed from them. The experience has been that not only have the licences been renewed, but that they have been renewed on a similar basis or a more favourable basis for the exploration companies.

The amendment recognises that "in practice Irish ports are widely used by petroleum companies but an obligation for the compulsory use of Irish ports would be anti-competitive and contrary to EU law". That is open to question, and certainly should be challenged. Maximising distances of dangerous substances has an environmental risk as well as an application in terms of EU competition law. The Irish Government can and should make arguments on that.

The next point in the amendment is on "the need for the State, as part of its energy policy, to increase the share of petroleum to be provided from indigenous resources in Offshore Ireland". That is the first news I received that this State has an energy policy. We seem to be making it up as we go along. To me, my party and many in society, increasing the share of fossil fuel use in light of a fast diminishing return seems nonsense that cannot be sustained in any energy policy which will eventually be submitted by this Government.

The Government's amendment calls for us to recognise "the implementation by the State of its requirements under the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive". This is the most insulting element of all. The experience of the State and the Government in terms of many infrastructural developments here has involved a scant regard for this directive. When one considers the options available for refining in terms of the Corrib gas field, such as offshore, directly onshore or inshore, the fact that the State constantly promotes, at the behest of the company involved, the least environmentally friendly of those three options, a facility many miles inshore, shows this Government either does not know what it is doing or does not care, which is a more damning indictment.

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