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

I commend Deputy McLoughlin on bringing this Bill forward. It cannot come a moment too soon. We need to make a definitive decision to ban hydraulic fracking, any prospect thereof and any other form of unconventional gas and oil extraction. I am pleased Members are now debating this Bill. It appears the Bill will pass through this Second Stage and will move on to Committee Stage. Deputy Catherine Connolly and another Deputy alluded to the fact that this seems to be quite a considerable achievement, given there were efforts to bring forward an amendment to delay the Bill for what would have been one year or 18 months. That it sought to delay the decision which this Bill aims to achieve, to ban fracking, is a worrying indication of the Government's reflex when it comes to this matter. It has been a strongly-felt concern of mine and others for quite some time. It moved me, it prompted Deputy McLoughlin, and importantly the people on the ground - in the Deputy's case the people in his constituency - who are concerned about the impact there. It also concerned the environmental movement in the State. I am pretty certain the people who helped me to draft the Bill I brought forward last December were the same people who drafted Deputy McLoughlin's Bill. The wording is pretty much the same with the exception that he has, rightly, updated the Bill to refer not just to fracking specifically but to any other form of unconventional efforts to extract shale, gas or oil from the different geological layers. That is an important update which I believe may have been prompted by events in Antrim. A company operating there, InfraStrata, was discovered to be engaged in pursuing shale gas in the region but claimed it was not fracking. I and others raised this issue in the House a while ago. What InfraStrata was doing represents the same threat as does fracking to the quality and safety of our water supplies. It is a good move to update our legislative effort to prohibit anything that could damage our environment or our water. Our concerns increased strongly with the whole question and nature of the EPA report. A few of us raised this at the environment committee in December of last year. It was highlighted to me by some environmental groups that two of the consultants who were drawing up many parts of the report on the health and environmental impact for the EPA were, incredibly, CDM Smith and AMEC, both of which were either existing or previous members of the Marcellus Shale Coalition and were major consultants to the fracking companies. In my opinion and that of many others, there was direct conflict of interest. These people, with a history of being pro-fracking and who were up to their necks in promoting the interests of the gas and oil companies, were, incredibly, doing the assessment for the EPA on the water requirements for fracking, the effects in terms of faults and fractures, the possible effects of earthquakes, the air monitoring, the effects on ground and surface water, regulations and best practice for fracking projects, environmental impacts and so forth. It was absolutely preposterous. That level of conflict of interest renders the EPA report completely worthless and completely corrupted. It could not do anything other than raise serious hackles of suspicion as to what was the actual purpose of the report.

At the environment committee, again prompted by some of the environmental activists, I asked the EPA if we would know at the end of the report whether fracking represented a danger to health. Incredibly, the EPA said no. At which point I asked what was the point of the report if at the end of it we will not even know if fracking affects our health. This came at just the same time when the New York State Department of Health had concluded - on the sound basis of the precautionary principle and the evidence available to it - that fracking was not safe for the people of New York. The evidence suggested that fracking could have a serious impact on the health of New Yorkers. It decided that the minimum requirement was that the precautionary principle had to apply and that no fracking should be allowed if there was any possibility that it could represent a danger to human health. Incredibly, when the New York State Department of Health can make a decision like that, our EPA is preparing a report that will not even tell us, at the end of a long and protracted process, if it might affect our health. What was the point? One suspects the point was the agency was not looking to see if fracking should be banned. It was looking to construct a report, with the assistance of two companies up to their necks in oil and gas, to show how we can make way for fracking and how it can be done in a safe way, rather than assessing whether it is safe from an environmental point of view of water safety and quality. It is certainly my suspicion that this was the case. It is fantastic that we have got this far. It is a tribute to the campaigners from Deputy McLoughlin's area and from the Border areas North and South and to environmental campaigners around here.

On the day we ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change, the idea that we would do anything other than ban the further extraction of gas and oil, with all of the attendant dangers, is bonkers. There would be no justification for it. It would fly completely in the face of any commitment to deal with climate change. If we were to do anything other than bring forward this Bill to impose the ban through the Houses as fast as we possibly can, the commitment would be exposed as a total sham. Let that be the end of it. We must protect the precious environment of the people in those areas, as well as, more generally, water and so on.

Like Deputy Tony McLoughlin and with the assistance of the same people, I was working on another Bill to update the law in this area. The additional element to my draft Bill which I could table as an amendment to this Bill on Committee Stage is that we would do the same to ban fracking offshore. If onshore fracking and unconventional exploration for gas and oil pose potential unknown health hazards, as well as seriously damaging environmental hazards, it has to be true offshore also. The same ban should be imposed on fracking and unconventional exploration offshore. I will argue this point on Committee Stage of this Bill or in proposing a separate Bill to include it in the law.

The Oireachtas has jurisdiction over only 26 of the counties on the island. The ban also needs to be imposed north of the Border. If fracking can go ahead north of the Border, it will adversely affect not just those in the North but also those in Deputy Tony McLoughlin's county, as well as others. On the next Stage we should include a provision in the Bill to the effect that it will be the policy of the Government and the State in negotiations or discussions with our Northern counterparts or Britain that there should be a prohibition on fracking and unconventional extraction north and south of the Border and that Ministers and the Taoiseach or anyone else will have to raise and campaign for it when negotiating with with our Northern counterparts.

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