Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right that we went into this crisis in good stead because the National Oil Reserves Agency to my mind has done a very good job. We have a lot of stock. We have a 90-day stock that we are required to have under International Energy Agency rules. The majority of that is held within the island. We have even looked at some of the security aspects of that over the past ten to 15 years, while recognising that the national distribution system is not just one distribution system, but has regional characteristics. Whitegate in Cork is a very strong centre because it is our main processing plant and is our only refinery.

On the Dublin market and the distribution from the Dublin area, I remember when I was in office 12 or 15 years ago, that was one of the strategic issues that we had to consider. Much work has been done to try to improve our stocks storage system on a national level such that if there is a disruption, we can balance it and manage it regionally. In the first release of stocks, we did some 220,000 barrels of oil as part of that. That was our fair share of the IEA process. That was ticketed in Denmark, but-----

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