Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

It is noteworthy that in the recent round of licensing which was, relatively speaking, more successful than previous rounds undertaken in the past decade, the Norwegian state oil company did not even submit a bid. It is not an issue of Norway having skills that are not otherwise applied here. The mistaken premise of the original article was that Norway and Ireland were comparable in terms of the potential for discovering hydrocarbons. The 13 companies to which we awarded licences a few months ago have the necessary skills. What we need is to get another 13 companies-----

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