Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Pearse Doherty said, the focus of the amendment is on making the application of the new regime retrospective. The one thing the all-party committee agreed on was that there should be no retrospective application. I thank the Minister for keeping faith with the proposals I brought to the Government following the Wood Mackenzie report. The debate took place in the House with a very diverse range of views, and some entirely unfeasible propositions were advanced, but everybody agreed there would be no retrospective application.

The challenge is to put in place a tax regime that will bring a fair return to the Exchequer without frightening away the exploration capacity we need. Ireland does not have the resources to go drilling offshore. We do not have the kind of investment that can afford to spend €100 million per offshore well. Way back in the 1970s, there was a brief period of optimism when it looked as though we might imitate some of the great finds in Norway and the North Sea. However, since the 1970s, we have made no oil find. Despite all the talk about giving away €600 billion, or whatever figure people want to pluck out of the sky, we have never had an oil find. We have had three gas finds that gave rise to the optimism of the early 1970s, and the find off north Mayo is the fourth. This has been the entire result of prospecting in offshore Ireland. While the well off Belmullet is small, it has the capacity, at peak, to meet 60% of Ireland’s needs. The peak will probably be brief, probably less than a decade.

The challenge is to increase prospecting and attract those who have the expertise, drilling capacity and, above all, resources to increase the level of exploration off our shores. We have not even managed to drill two wells on average during the past decade. At this rate, it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The Department directly concerned has assimilated a great deal of scientific and geological data that was not available earlier and it shows positive promise, but only if we can increase the exploration rate. The challenge was to strike a balance between a fair return to the Exchequer and not scaring away the exploration companies that we might attract here. Out of the blue, oil prices fell from more than $100 per barrel to half that price. There are more lucrative areas in the world for drilling than Ireland. If there is one area in which the ultra left of Ireland believes in poppycock and fairy tales, it is offshore exploration.

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