Fiona O'Malley (Independent)

I welcome the Minister, who is prolific. He is frequently in the Chamber dealing with legislation under all his banners. I want to discuss a different element of this Bill. On Second Stage, people choose the area of a subject they want to deal with specifically, and I will deal with offshore licences because the word "extraction" appears in the Bill's title.

I know the Minister is dealing with offshore licences and how to create an enabling environment for more extraction than we currently have. The committee has provided the Minister with a model of legislation to consider in the area. It would be a coup both for the Minister and the committee if our draft legislation could be taken on board. It would make all of us happy. It is a sign of a very good Minister, with confidence in himself or herself and the subject, to take amendments, support and suggestions from the Opposition or anywhere else. The bottom line is we are all interested in what is best for the country. A Minister does not necessarily need to fear suggestions from the Opposition or a committee. I encourage the Minister to move as quickly as possible on the legislation dealing with offshore licensing.

As with other speakers, I welcome the Bill. Anything dealing with safety and ensuring legislation is of the highest standard should be welcomed. Listening to the contribution of the Minister and others, one might be alarmed at what is current practice. Are we so out of kilter with proper practice and safety standards? I would like to think we are not acting dangerously.

Senator O'Toole referred to the visit we made to Belmullet and the Corrib gas site. One sees what one wants to see in many instances. This is true of previous speakers as well. I would like to think the process there is positive to the community as the industry is in an area where it is needed. There is a resource that will mitigate our dependency on imported gas and fuels, and I could see these positives. As I travelled with the committee to the site I was in a positive frame of mind about it. Equally, one has to be open to the issue because of the history of what had happened there. I was most reassured by the local people of the good work that is being done down there, the high standards that are applied and that they are grateful for the jobs. This happened a long time before the economy took the turn it has taken. People were even more glad to have jobs because it was an area that had a problem with emigration and this was stopping it. As we arrived on a Sunday evening, we had never seen a town that was busier. There are very few towns that are busy on a Sunday night, but Belmullet was booming. They were all saying "thank God" and much of this has got to do with jobs that come from the site.

As Senator O'Toole pointed out, Shell's safety record there was outstanding and that is what we saw. When Senator Ó Brolcháin travelled, he saw something else. I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between. The Minister's position is that we must support a company that has a licence, and I accept Senator O'Toole's comment about the appropriateness of the licensing agreement that was reached. I hope something like that will not happen again. However, the company has been licensed to come here and we need partnerships with industry. Senator O'Toole also highlighted the very poor take-up of extraction licensing, and we need to be realistic about that. We are not some kind of pseudo-state. We are a sovereign country and we have got to operate in an international context. We have to realise that our resources are attractive to companies coming in and using them. Given that the location of these resources is in the Atlantic, we must accept that it will be more expensive for an oil or gas exploration company to extract them. Therefore, we need to construct a regulatory system which enables them to do this, but this does not mean we are compromising safety standards.

People who are hostile to private operators in a public transport system seem to think that they operate to a different safety standard, but of course they do not. Safety standards are uniform. If we are creating an enabling environment for people to extract the natural resources that exist throughout our country, we must ensure it is as safe as possible. That is why I welcome that the Minister is streamlining the system to create a single safety standard.

It is worth listening to the contributions of other speakers. Senator O'Toole made an interesting point about commencement dates. What is the point in having gone through the legislative process to update the Statute Book and then not implementing the law? When we pass a law, we think that surely it will be enacted very quickly. The suggestion of five years to implement the Bill seems extremely generous. It should commence within two years. The Minister should respond to this because we should know why we cannot have a proper commencement date. As legislators, we should be confident that the legislation we pass will be brought in quickly.

I welcome the Bill and I hope we will be examining legislation on offshore licensing before the end of the year. We need to create an enabling environment because I know that is what the Minister wants to do.