Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Rabbitte was a leading voice in the past in writing pamphlets demanding that we ensure the people of this country get proper benefit from their offshore resources and that there should not be a giveaway. It was not just Deputy Rabbitte. The late Justin Keating, a former Minister, had a very different approach and was critical of what happened under the Fianna Fáil regime of the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and former Minister Ray Burke - the tax regime that effectively meant a giveaway of our potential gas and oil resources.

We should be well aware that gas and oil companies operate, in their offshore and onshore gas and oil exploration, in a very similar way to property developers, in that they are happy to sit on assets until the moment is opportune for them to make a killing. They are not remotely interested in the benefit to the State, the people or the environment, any more than the developers and land bankers were interested in how their land could contribute to housing our citizens or maintaining the economic stability of the country. They do not give a damn about any of those things. They sit on assets for the long term and wait for the opportune moment when they can make a killing. This is why there has been a chorus of voices protesting, campaigning and demanding that a regime that amounts to a giveaway must be changed in order to guarantee that when these companies decide it is profitable to start producing from these fields, we get what is ours.

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