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

Even at €80 million a pop, would it not be better for us to borrow the money to invest in a State company to do some drilling rather than borrowing €100 billion to bail out banks? Could we not have borrowed a fraction of that sum to drill because there are estimates of the equivalent of tens of billions of barrels of gas and oil offshore? Would this not have been a better investment than borrowing €100 billion to bail out rotten banks, speculators and bondholders?

The Minister did not answer my question. What I am trying to elicit is what are we getting back from the fields that were exploited. I understood the Minister to say that we were getting €190 million in royalties but what was the total take we got as against what the companies made? That would give a real sense of what we get back under those arrangements, even in a field that is in production.

There are other methods to entice in companies to explore. Why do we have this unique arrangement whereby as soon as the companies go into production we give it to them? That is unique. Why are we doing it?

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