Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I recognise people's ideological positions. We are, however, speaking to a worldwide audience about matters that have a huge impact on our development and on employment now and in the future. We should always be careful to ensure that the message we put out has a sound basis.

I was a member of an Oireachtas committee between 2002 and 2007 that published a report on oil and gas exploration. We went into it the subject in considerable detail. The question was why do we not have a national corporation that will dig deep, using modern technology, to avail of the resources for the benefit of the Irish people. That would have been a great idea but it costs €100 million every time one sinks the drill into the sea or the ground. It would be a good idea if we could borrow those resources from international banks. Unfortunately, we live in a very competitive world and the people who specialise in that sort of exploration are very selective.

We did have a giveaway policy for a couple of years but the level of exploration was not sufficient to indicate that we have massive untapped resources. Oil workers might say there are huge resources that the oil companies are keeping from us. If we have resources and the oil companies have found them they would be well advised to bring them up very quickly because soon oil will be a thing of the past. Our environment is changing and the fossil fuels that we use will become very difficult to handle in the future. We have plenty of information about that.

Climate change is a major international focus. The G8 and other large economic or political groups have to think of what will prevail in the future and how that will affect our environment. If unquantified resources are being kept from us my advice to the oil exploration companies would be to bring them ashore fairly quickly. We need to do something about them while we can still use those resources because the time is fast approaching when we will not.

I have been here long enough-----

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