Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)

The Labour Party continued by referring to the implications of applying royalties to the existing finds, stating that it can happen and there is no legal barrier to this, with the only issue being that it would cause reputational damage, something the Labour Party was at that time unwilling to comprehend but today is willing to sign up to because its members have their positions. The trick has been completed and they are happy in their positions today.

When the Minister responded to our motion yesterday he dismissed any State involvement on the basis that the State would not be able to come up with the money needed. As we all know, the State is well able to come up with the billions to pay off the bank debt in order to ensure that each and every citizen is burdened under a huge amount of debt. However, for banks, which are private institutions and include zombie banks like Anglo Irish Bank, which will never return a penny to the State, the billions can be found. Let us remember that on 31 March the Government Members were sitting on the other side of the House when €3.1 billion went into the zombie banks Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank. Billions could be found for those causes.

Let us consider the potential which the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, acknowledges may exist off our shoreline, although we cannot find any money to try to reap the rewards and harvest our resources, which God has provided for us to benefit the Irish people. If it benefits the bondholders, speculators and banks, the billions can be found, and they are found by picking the pockets of ordinary working people who, through the proposals of the Government and the IMF, will see increased carbon tax, oil prices, home heating costs, and all so the Government can find the money to bail out the zombie institutions that have destroyed our economy.

The two Government parties have taken to all of this like ducks to water. There is barely any discernible difference between this Administration and the last where it applies to oil and gas, and the same applies to the disastrous bank bailout and the austerity programme. It is rather strange to listen to Labour Party Ministers and Members dismiss out of hand any State involvement in oil and gas exploration in the exact same manner that the former Ministers, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell, might have done in the past.

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