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

I am asking a question. The former director has acknowledged that it was a mistake and that the field could be commercially viable. Can there be a justification any longer for the ridiculously and pathetically low tax rate, the lack of royalties and the effective handover of ownership, through our licensing system, to private oil companies of a reserve of oil that will almost certainly be commercially extractable and profitable in the very near future, if not this minute? We know the oil is down there. It is only a matter of time before it is extracted.

Under the current regime we will get nothing from it. We will probably get as much as in a little container of oil.

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