Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment proposed by Deputy Pearse Doherty.

The context of this is one of the major political scandals in the State over the past few decades, which was accurately called "the great Irish oil and gas robbery" by the Workers' Party even before the giveaway took the form it took in the 1990s. It was carried out by the former Minister for Energy, Ray Burke, and the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and was accurately described by the former Tánaiste, Dick Spring, as an act of economic treason. I refer to the giveaway of significant oil and gas resources, estimated by the companies themselves as the equivalent of 20 billion barrels of oil, worth €600 billion at today's prices. It resulted in a system which has yielded among the lowest levels of tax in the world, according to a report commissioned by a previous Government from Indecon. This proposal from the Government goes a tiny way towards remedying that but, in reality, would leave Ireland still at the very bottom of the pile in terms of the tax take from oil and gas and would continue to allow our oil and gas effectively to be given away, with no security of supply guaranteed and no control over what happens to it under these major oil multinationals, with the kind of behaviour that we saw over the past decade in the west by both Shell and Statoil at the expense of a local community. I agree with the amendment, which provides for the preparation of a report from the Government about how even this minimal measure could be applied to all finds. I do not accept the argument made by the Minister on Committee Stage that this would somehow amount to retrospective taxation, because it clearly would not. We are talking about tax from now on as opposed to tax applied retrospectively. It is simply a question of when the oil and gas was discovered. I do not see how a case can be made about legitimate expectation, etc., that rules us out of going there. It is clear, if the Government is serious in any way about tackling the giveaway that has taken place, that it should apply at least to all finds. Presumably, the Minister will oppose the amendment. I am interested in hearing his response as to why we cannot even have a study on this.

To demonstrate how minimal the Government's response on these issues has been, it may be noted that in 2012 the Oireachtas committee all-party report recommended a take of 40% on smaller discoveries and 80% on larger discoveries.

Instead, we have 30% and 55%, which is clearly completely and utterly inadequate. I am interested in hearing the Minister defend the continuation of the giveaway.

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