Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy McDonald is entitled to make her point. The purpose of the Bill is to transpose the offshore safety directive 2013/30 which follows the European Commission's review of offshore oil and gas operations in Europe, which in turn was prompted by the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. Our principal safety legislation is the Petroleum Exploration and Extraction Safety Act 2010. As this Act is broadly consistent with the directive, the proposed approach to transposition in Ireland is to amend the existing statutory framework by means of primary legislation and to integrate the directive requirements with the Commission for Energy Regulation and the existing petroleum safety framework. If we do not transpose this by the deadline of 19 July we would be out of line with almost all EU member states who have developed an offshore oil and gas sector as most of them expect to meet the transposition deadline.

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