Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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The country needs an integrated all-Ireland energy market. It also needs sufficient capacity for the future and accessibility to sustainable energy generation. It needs to provide this energy in an even manner across the regions. What we do not need is a system that may endanger the lives and health of citizens or create fear. We do not need a system that will reduce the cost of agricultural land and personal property. We do not need a system that will prevent the development of the energy market for decades, owing to intractable conflict. We do not need a system that will be forced on unwilling communities throughout the State.

In the mid-north east, where it is proposed to provide the north east-south interconnector, we have had six years of this process. We know more than most what is involved. We have had surveys, meetings, fund-raisers, Oireachtas committee meetings and expert reports and in the intervening period there has been a huge increase in the level of technology. We are now faced with confusion.

I believe the Minister made a statement to The Irish Timesat the end of January indicating that the North-South interconnector could not be put underground. This is despite the Government’s paying big money to an independent commission which stated that it could be put underground and after the fact that similar kV lines from Rush to Batterstown in County Meath run underground. We were told initially that the Minister said that it would not be included in the current review. I have some sympathy for the Minister because the Taoiseach may have pulled the rug from under his feet, after speaking to some of his backbenchers, and disregarded a Cabinet agreement on the North-South interconnector.

An EirGrid planning application is being withheld, or held back, until the independent review decides how to proceed. I stress that the North-South interconnector’s material impact on the citizens of the counties it goes through will be no different from that of any of the other projects going through the country. Not including it in the review is shockingly unfair to the citizens of that area. The North-South interconnector, Grid West and Grid Link projects have the same challenges and issues. They should be afforded the same level of analysis. I have heard the talk of urgency in that the North-South interconnector project is further advanced - some have stated that it is 97% there. This is not true. It is at planning inquiry stage, exactly as it was almost five years ago. EirGrid withdrew the planning application from this project in the middle of the oral hearing in 2010 because of a lack of thoroughness in its submission. Where is EirGrid's urgency in that process? A total of 97% of landowners along the route of the North-South interconnector have stated that they will never allow EirGrid onto their land to proceed with this. This has major implications for the opportunity for this project to proceed in a timely fashion. We are nowhere near 97% of the way through this process.

It has also been stated that there have been two previous reports on the North-South interconnector. These reports, however, did not tackle the proper construction cost and route identification, neither did they include the cost-benefit analysis to cover all the associated costs outside the technical and construction costs. We should make sure that we proceed in that manner.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I have appointed an independent panel of experts, chaired by Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, a former judge of the Supreme Court, to decide terms of reference for comprehensive, route-specific studies of fully underground and overhead options for EirGrid's Grid Link and Grid West projects.

The panel will ensure that the studies are complete, impartial, objective and comparable. Both the overhead and underground options will be published side by side, in objective and comparable terms, before consideration is given to appropriate next steps. On the North-South transmission line, the situation is different. Planning for this project has been under way for the past ten years. A planning application has already been submitted for the part of the project in Northern Ireland and that planning process is in train.

Detailed studies have already been conducted, most recently by the independent international commission of experts appointed in July 2011. A route-specific underground analysis was conducted by PB Power, which found that the cost of undergrounding would significantly exceed the cost of the more usual overhead cables. The PB Power analysis was considered and confirmed by the independent commission, which estimated that the cost of undergrounding would be at least three times that of overhead cables.

The North-South transmission line is a critical and strategically urgent transmission reinforcement and is of vital importance in the broader North-South context. As well as reinforcing the grid in the north-east region of this State, the transmission line will be vital to maintaining the security of electricity supply for Northern Ireland into the future. I met with my Northern Ireland counterpart, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Ms Arlene Foster MLA, to discuss the very real security of supply concerns that would arise for Northern Ireland from any significant delay in progressing this project, and to assure her of our continued commitment to timely delivery.

I have previously said I recognise the public would be reassured if they knew that the overhead and underground options for North-South were both investigated and that the published studies are sufficient to enable a similar comparison be made by An Bord Pleanála in deciding on the merits of this planning application.

When I met Mrs. Justice McGuinness I accordingly asked her to consider what work, if any, the panel might usefully undertake to establish whether there has been parity of treatment between the North-South project in terms of the work already undertaken and the issues the panel will examine in respect of Grid Link and Grid West. Mrs. Justice McGuinness has since convened the first meeting of the panel and she has undertaken to raise with it what, if anything, it can do to help.

Another very relevant factor is that the North-South line has been designated at EU level as a 'project of common interest', one of 248 key trans-European energy infrastructure projects listed as such. It seems now to be clear, although I have yet to receive formal confirmation that, because of this status, the planning application will be subject to enhanced principles for public participation, which are set out in EU Regulation 347 of 2013, published in April last year. It is too early to say to what extent this enhanced form of public participation in the planning process - which I stress will apply to the North-South project alone - might meet the concerns of the public and, perhaps, make separate and additional deliberations by another body both unnecessary and otiose.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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Deputy Tóibín adopts a conciliatory tone of support for an interconnector but he has a very funny way of supporting it because effectively he is opposing it. It is a considerable parliamentary talent to be able to present obstruction and opposition in reasonable tones. Some mornings I wake up and hope I live long enough to see Deputies Tóibín and Mary Lou McDonald being given responsibility for doing something, as distinct from talking up opposition to everything.

This project has been planned for ten years. Deputy Tóibín says he accepts there is urgency around it.

If he does not accept it, if he talks to his colleagues in Northern Ireland where they have real concerns about security of supply in the not too distant future, they will reinforce the point of view for him.

A route specific analysis was undertaken by PB Power for Eirgrid and there was the international commission to which the parties that comprise the current Government committed. It was carried out by experts from Scandinavia and Belgium and their conclusions are in the public domain. All I can say at this stage is that we should leave it to Mrs. Justice McGuinness to opine. I have explained that I have put the case to her and she, in turn, has undertaken to examine with her expert independent panel what, if anything, they can do to assist in this situation because it appears that the Deputy and I are agreed that the country needs an interconnector that is fit for purpose and that, which not being in place, is costing between €20 million and €30 million per annum. There is some urgency attaching to this matter, particularly in Northern Ireland, and we have to let the process in place work itself out.