Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There is no doubt we are facing a real crisis. It is a crisis that has millions of people fearful of their next bill with thousands more being pushed into that situation daily, who are not being officially recognised. We have hundreds of thousands of people officially recognised as living in energy poverty, but hundreds of thousands more are not recognised.

By the end of the crisis, without action from the Government we may have a majority of citizens in energy poverty and experiencing real hardship in keeping on the heat and light and having to make choices about eating or heating. There is no doubt it is a historic crisis. The Deputies are right to table a motion but their solutions are unreal.

The main demand of the motion will do nothing for ordinary people suffering in the crisis. The motion hints at solutions of a windfall tax and mentions a national retrofit programme and decoupling gas. It also quite rightly points to the examples of other states which have successful renewable energy strategies. I have the feeling these demands are an afterthought to the real business being pushed, which is the interests of fuel companies, specifically Providence Resources and that jewel in its crown of Barryroe. There is a saying that one should never waste a good crisis. That saying is well used in the House but this is a classic example of it. There are many reasons for the current crisis but it is not a crisis of energy supply. It is a crisis of energy pricing.

The one thing that has absolutely nothing to do with this crisis is the inability or delay in Providence Resources or any other oil company extracting oil or gas anywhere from the waters of the State. We could tear up the climate emergency measures that we voted for and tell Providence, Shell, BP and anybody else to go dig their wells and sink wells all over this island and it would do nothing to deal with the energy crisis we have and the prices that people are facing. There are two reasons I say this. The first is the State's licensing terms for the exploration of oil and gas. Depending on when licences were issued the companies will most likely pay no tax on their finds and no royalties to the State. The State has had a policy of giving away the State's natural resources and reducing any potential tax take from oil and gas. Corrib, like others, is able to claim the full cost of setting up its field and pays no tax on its production. The licensing terms have been labelled the most generous of any state in the world. That was under the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael philosophy and it remains so with regard to renewable energy, which is mainly in the hands of private companies.

The terms of these licences also mean that any company that finds oil or gas is under no obligation to sell it back to this State. It can sell it to where it sees fit. An oil or gas find in Ireland does not mean an oil or gas sale to the Irish State. It means Providence or anybody else that finds oil or gas may sell it to the State but the State will be charged at international market rates. In short, finding oil and gas anywhere will do nothing to address the crisis we face. I want to find out from the Deputies what they think about the fact that Shannon LNG paid more than €4 million to Kerry County Council. If the LNG fails will that money be returned to Shannon LNG?

In the motion the Deputies make reference to domestic oil and gas and how it would have a lower carbon footprint than importing foreign oil and gas. Many of them have articulated this over the years but they have a clear scepticism on the facts of climate change, seeing it mostly as a giant conspiracy and often speaking about an international campaign to cast doubt on climate change and rubbish any measures it attempts to address. The House will forgive me if I doubt that the carbon footprint of oil and gas is not a real concern here. The floods in Pakistan are receding and as the lives of 30 million people are devastated, sceptics on climate get bolder in their claims and denials. The truth is they could live to see historic droughts and storms but they could also deny the evidence in front of them.

The hysteria regarding energy security is similar to that of using a good crisis in the case of the war in Ukraine. To listen to the hysterical talk that the Brits might cut us off and about our reliance on one pipe we would think we got gas from a small pipeline that could fail any second-----

See this speech in context