Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, there is much merit in the argument Deputy Smith has put forward this morning and, in particular, the point that there is more than one facet to this problem, as the Deputy and the Minister of State have acknowledged in their contributions. There is a strong environmental issue related to fuel laundering, and in tandem with that, of course, is the fact that it is illegal, fraudulent activity that is cheating the State and so on. When one pulls together all these things, it highlights the seriousness of the problem. I do not know whether anyone else has made this point, but it is not as though fuel laundering is a new phenomenon. It is a long-standing and highly lucrative activity for criminals, be they criminals who have a political slant or those who have none.

I do not see much difference in the two, however.

While not necessarily placing the blame on those of us who are here this morning as legislators, it is regrettable that steps were not taken in the past to bring a halt to this. As has already been pointed out, one of the great discrepancies relating to this activity is that the penalties involved are not sufficiently severe. One of the most effective ways of dealing with those who engage in fuel-laundering and those who knowingly buy laundered fuel is through penalising them. It is similar to the illegal drug trade. People get very excited about it, having a variety of adjectives to describe drug barons, as well as what they would do with them. Drug pushers exist, however, because they have customers. I am always reminded about a point made by a speaker from an audience on a forum I attended on illegal drugs. On why dealers make so much money out of cocaine, he said they do so because, on a Friday and Saturday night, they have middle-class customers who buy the stuff in abundance. We cannot attempt to do something as legislators without taking into consideration both sides in this process, namely, those who produce and those who knowingly buy this material. There are many who buy laundered fuel.

Historically, as the Minister of State touched on, this problem could never have been solved using just one police force by virtue of the fact that it exists almost exclusively in Border counties. It requires both authorities to operate in tandem, which was presented in the Minister of State’s argument. All of us agree that it would be the most effective way of tackling this problem. The Minister of State acknowledged that she would take some of the Bill’s points into consideration. In my time in this House, this is the first time this problem has been highlighted in legislation, which is no bad thing. I hope there are some grounds for progressing this legislation.

I know a great deal of this legislation is, quite rightly, focused on the environmental aspect of the problem. The Minister of State gave the figure for cleaning up fuel-laundering operations at €7 million. I would have thought the more up-to-date figure is substantially more than that. Whether it is €7 million or €10 million, one could open many hospital wards and employ many nurses with that amount. This is taxpayers’ money. Local authority workers have to clean this up when they should not have to. Hopefully, for the first time, we can find a mechanism and structure for confronting and dealing with this problem.

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