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

In so far as there has been any movement on this issue, credit has to go to the people of north County Mayo, the Shell to Sea campaign and the many other campaigners around the country who supported their battle and sought to expose the scandal of what has happened in north county Mayo, Shell's treatment of the people of that area and the scandalous giveaway tax and licensing terms established by Ray Burke, Bertie Ahern and Frank Fahey. One only has to mention these names to understand why our tax and licensing regime gave away our offshore gas and oil reserves. The Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, has repeatedly stated that our reserves are unproven but the estimates that have been produced by oil companies through geological and seismic studies, as well as actual finds, indicate potentially substantial reserves. There are gas and oil reserves off our shores and at some point they will be exploited. When people justify the very low tax regime that applies and the system of concessions that gives exclusive rights to private oil companies to develop fields and take ownership of the oil and gas produced, they say that our resources are unproven or not commercial. What is deemed commercial will vary over time but we know that oil and gas prices are going to increase. Oil companies, like developers of land, sit on finds until they deem the time is optimal to exploit them and profit from them.

How much information is available to the Minister and the Department about what has happened in respect of drilling and the capping of wells by oil companies? The companies know what is going on down there but I doubt that we know. People who worked on these drilling operations have told me these companies are a law unto themselves and nobody is representing the State in finding out what is going on. As I previously noted, Statoil took away a full tanker of oil from its Connemara field. The Minister acknowledged this but none the less he repeatedly claims there is no proven reserve at that field.

The Government has been forced into addressing this issue because of people's protests. While some improvements have been made, major problems remain. Norway established a state oil company that was involved in the process at every hand's turn and, even before the discovery of Ecofisk, declared sovereignty over its resources and decided to ensure that its citizens got the maximum benefit from them. Sometimes we will have to do deals with international oil companies because we do not have the expertise or money for the initial investment.

The problem is the regime still being proposed is one where they have all the control and get allowances and tax deductions. That means despite having headline or nominal rates, the companies can write off large amounts of losses and costs in different ways so the effective tax take would be minimal and almost unquantifiable. On examining our corporate tax regime generally, one would be very worried.

There has been a marginal improvement but it falls way short of what it should be. We need a State oil and gas company and it should be involved in the development and production of these resources. Under no circumstances should the fields be given away to private oil companies.

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