Development (Strategic Gas Reserve) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-30
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Ciarán Ahern (LAB), Dublin South-West

I move amendment No. 4:
In page 8, after line 39, to insert the following:
" "hydraulically fractured gas” means liquefied natural gas, or natural gas in any other form, that has been produced, in whole or in part, by means of hydraulic fracturing within the meaning of section 5A of the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act 1960;"
This amendment is about fracked gas, which is not something we have spoken about yet in the debate. The amendment has been tabled with a view to trying to be constructive and to building more safeguards into the use of this facility. It relates to consenting, in that this is the type of product that will be going through a licensed or designated facility and the Government should be cognisant of what is going through, and the State needs to be cognisant of what is being used, in these facilities. If this facility is going to exist, we want the gas being used in it to be the least destructive gas possible.
We know that LNG, particularly when sourced from the US as we suspect the LNG for this facility is going to be, is usually derived from fracking but this practice is not defined in the Bill before us. This is why I have included a definition of "hydraulically fractured gas" as meaning "liquefied natural gas, or natural gas in any other form, that has been produced, in whole or in part, by means of hydraulic fracturing within the meaning of section 5A of the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act 1960". That Act defines hydraulic fracturing and, as we know, an amendment to that Act in 2017 banned the practice of fracking in Ireland, although not the importation of fracked gas. At the time, the Minister of State spoke of Fianna Fáil's well-known opposition to fracking and acknowledged the detrimental environmental impacts.
Unfortunately, a subsequent Government policy statement introducing a de facto ban on the importation of fracked gas was overturned for the purposes of developing this LNG facility. The Government is willingly enabling an incredibly destructive environmental practice so long as others have to deal with the cost. One of the issues we had with the overturning of the ban on the importation of fracked gas was that it was not restricted solely to this facility, which we understand to be a State-led and operated facility. It has essentially created a free-for-all for other commercial operators to import fracked gas as well.
We know just how destructive fracked gas is. While burning it produces less carbon dioxide than coal, the extraction processes release enormous amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years.
Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said earlier to stop talking about climate targets when we are talking about these types of facilities. Okay, but then let us talk about something else. Let us talk about human health and human rights when it comes to fracked gas. We know that North American fracking operations for oil and gas are driving the current surge in global levels of methane. We know that methane has contributed approximately 40% of all global warming to date. We know that fracking is so damaging to the environment. It releases toxic air pollution, contaminates water and results in earthquakes, as well as significant other public health impacts. It is an environmental injustice, with injuries not borne equally by all.
There is a reason we banned it here. It is more than a little hypocritical that we would ban it in our own country and for our people but then allow its importation from other countries from where maybe the effects will not be felt so keenly as they are here. We also know that the liquefaction and transportation of natural gas as liquefied natural gas, LNG, raises its greenhouse gas emissions even further, by another 30%. This is because of the need for evaporative cooling and venting and because flaring is used to control pressure during regasification.
Just today, the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, released a call to action on methane. This all relates back to the imported fracked gas. I am referring to the methane being released. The Secretary General said that methane has been responsible for nearly one third of global warming to date and that it remains significantly underprioritised in climate action and political decision-making. He also said that, "Cutting methane emissions is one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective opportunities to slow global warming in the near term while delivering cleaner air, stronger crop yields, improved health and major economic benefits." The UN wants countries worldwide to make methane more measurable, reportable and verifiable. It is looking for transparency and empirical data in relation to reporting methane emissions and so on.
All this goes back to this being a regressive move by the State to be facilitating the import of this highly damaging fracked gas, which releases so much methane. At the same time, we are disapplying section 15 of the climate Act from all of this. This means there is even less transparency and less counting of the emissions that this facility will generate. We know that the CEOs of LNG companies would not live beside the facilities their companies build. We can talk about jobs and the economic benefits of all these facilities but they do, worldwide, have serious human health and human rights consequences that I do not think this Government is taking seriously enough. This is why I am proposing this amendment.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-30