Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I remind the Minister that we are also committed to the timely delivery of the North-South interconnector but not in its current format. The Minister mentioned it has taken ten years to get the planning levels to this point. The nub of the problem is that the current conflict is leading to delays and each year of delay costs tens of millions of euro. The Minister also mentioned the two reports. If they are relevant to the North-South interconnector they are also fully relevant to the other projects overhead around the State, which have exactly the same issues. One of the key differences in the expert panel the Minister has put together is that it has been given the latitude to develop its own terms of reference and will include the full comparative analysis of underground versus overhead. This option was not available for the other report whose terms of reference did not allow it to study costs other than potential technical costs, in other words, the hundreds of millions of euro costs caused by the drop in property and land prices in the area.

The sense of urgency that the Minister mentioned should also be afforded to the other projects. If they are urgent we should seek a process to allow them to proceed without replicating what has happened in the case of the North-South interconnector which has gone on for ten years. We need to develop a framework model to restore public confidence and participation in this process. The exclusion of the North-South interconnector does nothing for public confidence. We all need and want to see a conclusion to this process but we want it to be based on fact rather than the current system.

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