Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The estimated potential of our oil and gas reserves should be outlined and examined further. It is estimated that €420 billion of reserves have been discovered recently under the Irish Sea but there has been a lack of exploration of late. In his speech the Minister mentioned that of the 158 exploration areas and wells drilled offshore, two thirds were done in the 1970s and 1980s, so there has been very little attention paid by the Irish Government to the potential in this sector.

Previous Deputies have outlined how Fianna Fáil handed over our reserves so I was not surprised to hear Deputy Ó Cuív welcoming this; that demonstrates how minimal the effort has been. In the past Fianna Fáil ensured that the wealth which could be derived by the Irish people from these resources would not be realised. A former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, did a deal with multinational companies before Ray Burke and Bertie Ahern compounded this, leaving us with scandals like that in Rossport, where the State through the Garda is spending large amounts to protect a private company that is profiting from our natural resources.

Today, the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, has indicated there will still be exclusive reliance on a tax on profits as a means of getting any money from our natural resources. We have all seen how creative multinationals are with accountancy practices, so in effect we may get nothing from the corporation tax rate referred to by the Minister. We have seen how Apple has paid no tax whatever on profits in Ireland and Starbucks has paid €35,000 since 2007. We may well see absolutely the same behaviour from these oil companies.

Oil companies are being given full control over the vast majority of the profits made through exploration. The State is opting to take no share in the production process, with no control over what happens to our oil and gas, whether it is landed here or supplied to the Irish market. There has been no comment from the Minister about a national oil company and the potential to establish same, although it is mentioned in the report. The Government has not even referred to the idea of production sharing, for example, where royalties would be held by the Government as an option. It is feasible for Ireland to set up a State company to explore our natural resources in the same manner as how electricity was supplied to the nation by a public company in the 1930s.

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