SINN FÉIN HAS tabled a Dáil motion which, if passed, would see the State revoke Shell’s licence for the Corrib Gas Pipeline and take a 51 per cent ownership of all gas and oil finds in its territory.

The motion, which will be discussed during Sinn Féin’s designated private members’ time in the Dáil on Tuesday and Wednesday, would also see the exploration licence for oil and gas in Lough Allen to be revoked.

Other measures proposed in the motion would include the establishment of an official State-owned exploration company, and an introduction of a new tax which would impose a 50 per cent levy on all profits reaped from such exploration.

The motion also cites a 2006 estimate from the then-Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources which suggested there could be as much as ten billion barrels’ worth of oil off Ireland’s shores.

At current market prices, that quantity of crude oil would fetch a market value of €855bn – though the Sinn Féin motion downplays this value to around €700bn.

The motion cites the 1919 Democratic Programme, which declared that the nation’s sovereignty extends to all of Ireland’s “material possessions, the Nation’s soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation”.

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh told RTÉ News that the terms given to gas and oil companies exploring in Ireland were “among the most generous terms in the world.”

Sinn Féin’s motion in full

That Dáil Éireann:

conscious of the declaration in the Democratic Programme that ‘the Nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation’s soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation’; and

in view of the vast untapped potential that exists off our shores in oil and gas reserves, estimated by the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources in 2006 to be ten billion barrels oil equivalent, which at current prices amounts to a potential value of around €700 billion;

calls for:

— a complete review of licensing and revenue terms and the immediate revoking of the consents given to the Corrib consortium and the license for Lough Allen pending such a review;

— the establishment of a State oil, gas and mineral exploration company that would hold a 51% majority share in all oil and gas finds and would have its own research facility in order to collect full and up to date information on reserves;

— the imposition of a 50% tax on oil and gas profits; and

— a 7.5% royalty;

and that the revenues that would accrue from this would provide towards the resources for long term and sustainable growth in place of the current indenture to the EU and IMF because of the unsustainable bank debt.”

— Martin Ferris, Gerry Adams, Michael Colreavy, Seán Crowe, Pearse Doherty, Dessie Ellis, Mary Lou McDonald, Sandra McLellan, Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, Jonathan O’Brien, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Brian Stanley, Peadar Tóibín.