Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Question 167: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if his approval was required before a company (details supplied) with no prior experience in the area of biofuels, was awarded excise relief on 42.15 million litres of bioethanol under the Mineral Oil Tax Relief Scheme II; the quantity of bioethanol that has been produced by the company in the period 2006 - 2010; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23820/10]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)
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In Budget 2006 a further package of excise relief on biofuels valued at over €200 million over a five year period was approved by the Minister for Finance. The Biofuel Mineral Oil Tax Relief (MOTR) Scheme II was advertised by my Department as a competitive call for proposals open to anyone who could fulfil the criteria for the scheme. An assessment panel was established to review the applications comprising officials from my Department, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and Enterprise Ireland. Each application was marked individually in accordance with the evaluation criteria outlined in the Guidance Notes provided to all applicants for the Scheme. The final scores were then listed and the assessment panel awarded mineral oil tax relief to the highest scoring in each category, followed then by the second highest scoring and so forth. My Department was required to make recommendations based on this process, to the Minister for Finance in relation to biofuels projects to be approved for excise relief under the scheme.

Individual amounts of biofuel produced by particular companies under the scheme is deemed to be commercially sensitive information. Biofuel production figures under the scheme are given out on the basis of either a general overall production figure or an overall production figure per category and are available on my Department's website.