Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I welcome the report and the work put into it by the all-party committee. The Deputy can be assured I will take it seriously. The Seanad has invited me to discuss the report tomorrow.

There are eleven major recommendations, the common sense of some of which I certainly recognise. I would like the opportunity to discuss this further and have already committed to agreeing to do so whenever the Whips can arrange a slot in the House for us to discuss the report adequately. I have not had an opportunity to go into the detail yet, however, even with my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy O'Dowd. We need to sit down and go through the recommendations one by one, in some greater detail than opportunity has presented so far.

Deputy Boyd Barrett makes a fair point about my position on this issue. Regrettably, the hopes all of us had in the 1970s for significant offshore strikes have not been borne out; the performance has been very disappointing. One could take an optimistic view and say the results have been very disappointing because of the inadequacy of the exploration and drilling activity that has gone on, with only a few holes a year being drilled. I do not know why one would have a right to expect to strike gold at that rate of activity unless one was drilling off the shore of Norway. For that reason, this Government finds itself in the position that in order to increase the level of drilling off our shoreline we must be able to incentivise those who can do it. We cannot do it; we do not have the investment. The talk was of a State development company but in these circumstances, at €80 million on average per hole, we are not able to do that. Neither are we able to compete with Norway where 78% of the cost of drilling a hole is refunded if the hole is dry. Whatever happens to me when the digital switchover happens, I would be taken away to the funny farm if I were to agree to refund 78% of the dry holes drilled off our shoreline, given the performance since the 1970s.

I point Deputy Boyd Barrett to the fact that the tax take in the most similar country to Ireland, Portugal, is 27.5%, with 30% in Spain and 34% in France. That is the background. However, I welcome the report and look forward to the discussions we will have in the House about it.

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