Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to the climate action plan. At a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action yesterday, the Minister outlined the 180 recommendations and actions needed to ensure greener and renewable energy for the future of Ireland and the world. We had a long debate with him and extra impetus was placed on certain elements. The homepage of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has a link to the climate action plan but it also has a link to two consultations relating to site surveys by Europa Oil for Edgeworth Prospect and Kiely East Prospect. These relate to discovery of oil or more fossil fuels, which goes against the idea of keeping fossil fuels in the ground and aiming for renewable energy. The links to these consultations are beside the link to the climate action plan, and it is quite staggering to have them on the Department's homepage.

We must move to renewable energy, and some of the 180 actions we discussed yesterday deal with that in depth. On the Department's website the first thing we see is the potential for more licences for fossil fuel discovery and extraction but we know we must keep them in the ground. We must stop digging. Will the Leader ask the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to come in and explain these licences, how many there are in hand and how many have been applied for? How many will be successful and who makes the decision, given that the climate action plan was published two days ago?