Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the Prohibition of the Exploration and Extraction of Onshore Petroleum Bill 2016. The Bill seeks to provide for the prohibition of hydraulic fracking. This is particularly relevant on the day that the House approved the ratification of the Paris Agreement. I am pleased that the Government withdrew its amendment today. If the amendment had been pushed, Fianna Fáil would certainly have voted against it because the only thing it would have done was kick the can down the road for another 12 or 18 months. It is very important that we deal with this issue now. This is a conversation we need desperately to have immediately.

Fianna Fáil opposes the use of fracking as outlined in our energy policy paper published in April 2015. We demand a ban on any fracking activity in Ireland. The risks to our natural environment posed by the pumping technique and the fate of the fluids used in the drilling and fracturing process cannot be stressed enough. A simple question we have to ask is how many of us have actually been involved in or lived in an area with a high level of gas or oil development. Fracking would completely change the agricultural, rural and tourism character of our landscape to one that is industrialised. People are genuinely concerned about public health, drinking water, air quality, climate change, social harmony and the social fabric of our communities and so am I.

The concerns of the people have been validated. On Tuesday, the Sustainable Water Network published an independent research report on the impact of fracking for shale gas on water resources. The report concluded that the carrying out of fracking and other shale gas activities in Ireland is not consistent with achieving and maintaining good water quality and a healthy water environment and should not, therefore, be permitted. The potential massive risks to our drinking water from fracking are simply not acceptable, nor is the possibility of serious damage to our reputation as a high quality food producing nation. That is not worth risking. It is not in our interest to tramp on people's rights and values. France, Bulgaria, Scotland and Germany have all banned fracking in response to these risks. Fianna Fáil is not willing to subject communities to any potential risk which might undermine the integrity of the water supply or the natural environment in which we live.

In the UK, it appears the Government intends to allow large-scale fracking operations across the country, which will end a previous moratorium on shale gas production put in place after fracking caused two small earthquakes near Blackpool in 2011. They seem to have forgotten about all that. Our Government is awaiting the outcome of the EPA study before deciding on a definite policy. We have serious concerns about the independence of the study into fracking because of the involvement of the consultancy firm CDM Smith. CDM Smith is avidly pro-fracking and has advised on exploratory gas extraction projects in the USA and Europe. This study does not have the makings of an objective, independent analysis of the environmental risks and impact of hydraulic fracturing. It fails to address the fundamental issues attached to whether Ireland should extract shale gas, but is rather concerned about how to get it out of the ground.

Fracking is a massive issue in my constituency. It is a rural issue. Sligo, Leitrim, south Donegal and east and west Cavan are regarded as constituting one of the most promising locations for fracking because of the region's geology. Supporters of the technology say it is safe and could bring jobs to parts of Ireland like my constituency rather than emigration and economic difficulties. They say it would have a direct economic impact on the region. However, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, who pioneered hydraulic fracturing, has serious concerns himself about where the technology is going and as to its economic merits. In an interview with The Anglo-Celtin 2011, Dr. Ingraffea said with reference to the Lough Allen basin which spans counties Cavan, Fermanagh and Leitrim that it was highly unlikely that there could be an economically productive shale gas well of the scale commonly being used in the USA that used only water and sand. In the USA, fracturing has been lauded as the promising gateway fuel producer, but fracking is a short-term, limited industry whose potential impact has been vastly overstated, in some cases by 96%. It cannot be undone and will permanently damage agriculture and tourism, the two pillars of the Irish economy. With reference to the rhetoric that the majority of fracturing fluids remain underground in the fracking process, I again quote Dr. Ingraffea who said the industry is fond of saying that most of what they pump down, stays down. However, all shale gas wells continue to produce fracturing fluid and brine containing heavy metals for their entire lives.

One has to be very careful about this. There are serious questions we need to ask ourselves. How are we going to address climate change if we take fossil fuels out of the ground, combust them and release CO₂into the atmosphere? Can we afford to remove billions of litres of water from our water cycle forever? If we do not look at the way industry developments are projected, there is a real chance that irreparable harm will be done to water resources and the environment. In New York state, there is a common saying which I recently came across to the effect that fracking fractures communities also. The mounting scientific evidence overwhelmingly shows that permitting fracking poses significant threats to the air, water and health and safety of individuals and communities. It poses the risk of intractable and irreversible problems and exacerbates climate change. What we get out of all of this is nothing. We lose what we have and the reason we live here. Given the lack of any evidence that fracking can be done safely and the wealth of evidence to the contrary, I consider a complete and outright ban the only responsible decision to take.

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