Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We should be aware that there are 432 active prospecting licences which cover about 21% of the country's land area. It means that 432 teams are actively prospecting, in many cases for gold, in different places all over the country. Some of those sites are within the Deputy's constituency in Sligo. It is this particular instance in Leitrim that has drawn considerable attention, not just from the Deputy but also from his constituency colleagues, Deputies Harkin and Martin Kenny.

That may perhaps be because Leitrim, especially north Leitrim, is a place that is particularly environmentally sensitive. Local activist groups there have successfully managed to block fracking in the past and helped to change the national policy on that activity.

There are also concerns about forestry, with evergreen trees putting people's homes in the shade, wind farm development and so on. There has therefore been a lot of interest in what will happen. That may be the reason Leitrim is the place where there has been a sudden interest in and a large movement concerned with gold prospecting.

The process of getting a gold prospecting consent is similar to the planning permission process, to which Deputy MacSharry referred. Anybody can apply for planning permission to build anything anywhere. It is just an application. Someone fills in the form and submits it with the fee. That is what has happened in this case. Any company can apply to prospect anywhere if it wants to do so. It pays, I think, a €190 fee and applies. That does not mean it will get a consent. We should bear in mind as well that there are two mines in the whole of Ireland that are active, namely, the Tara lead and zinc mines and the gypsum mines in Monaghan. Of the 242 active teams and many thousands of groups that have obtained consents and drilled hundreds of thousands of boreholes, only two mines ever came out of any of that activity. The chances of anything being mined are therefore extremely remote.

I do, however, take the Deputy's concerns on board and I will relay them to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. A decision has not yet been made.

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