Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

-----our gas and oil fields will give no royalties to the Irish people. We will have no security of supply for any gas or oil that may be found off the west coast and even in regard to the taxes which are in place the companies will get tax write-offs and effectively will pay no tax whatsoever. One could not get a better definition of a giveaway.

We are discussing a resource estimated to have a possible value of up to €800 billion or €900 billion at current oil and gas prices. It is extraordinary. Why do we have a licensing arrangement? Why do we continue to stand over such arrangements? When these companies find gas and oil we hand ownership over to them instead of having our own State gas and oil company which would retain ownership. Of course, we may need to have production sharing agreements or other arrangements with foreign gas and oil companies when we need their expertise but the notion of handing it all over to them is just extraordinary. The people of Rossport and Erris have suffered the consequences of Shell controlling the whole process.

I appeal to the Government, for God's sake, to do something about this unbelievable giveaway of our natural resources.

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