Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On 11 July, one week after a Bill to ban onshore fracking was passed, the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment gave consent to Providence Resources to commence drilling for oil in the Porcupine Bank off the coast of Kerry. This is just one of a slew of drilling expeditions recently permitted by the Minister, with the North Celtic Sea basin off the coast of Cork and the Kish Bank off Dalkey's Forty Foot swimming spot next in line. The company will drill for 45 to 60 days throughout the summer without a strategic environmental assessment having been carried out. In a desperate plea for investment, it states that it expects to find 5 billion barrels of oil. Has the Minister thought about the impact of these drilling expeditions from a social, environmental and economic point of view? In June 1991, the Government declared all Irish waters to be a whale and dolphin sanctuary, the first of its kind in Europe, but the seismic blasts from exploration and drilling are deadly for these mammals because they give rise to disorientation, deafness and internal bleeding over distances of up to 100 miles. A deaf whale is a dead whale. One blast also kills 64% of zooplankton, which is the basis of the marine ecosystem, for up to 0.7 miles. We cannot afford to look for any more fossil fuels. International climate experts warn that 80% of known fossil fuels must stay in the ground in order that we might avoid going over the safe 2^oCelsius limit in respect of global warming. The Minister recently spoke to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and IMPACT on the need for a just transition to a low-carbon economy. In banning fracking and working on climate action, the Minister claims that he would protect workers in Bord na Móna, farmers and tourism but he shows that he has no intention of protecting the transition or providing a consistent policy with regard to green investment. In complete doublespeak, he is inviting the destruction of our coastal fishing, marine resources and tourism industries and a marine ecosystem for one of the lowest Government tax takes for oil and gas in the world. Extraction of oil and gas from the Irish Sea is not even profitable. Shell Oil recently left the Corrib gas field with a loss of €2 billion. The granting of these licences is a slap in the face for young Irish people. A peer-reviewed study published yesterday in the journal Earth System Dynamicsargues that if massive emissions reductions do not begin soon, the burden placed on young people to extract CO₂emitted by prior generations may become implausibly difficult and costly. This new fossil fuel infrastructure investment will lock Ireland into a completely discredited economic model that serves neither the planet nor its people and that is built on a form of fuel that is fast becoming irrelevant. This shows inconsistency and incompetence on the part of a Minister and a Department named in honour of climate action and environment. I recently made amendments to the fracking legislation to ban offshore fracking and all fossil fuel exploration and these received a great response in the House.