Dr. Tom O'Flaherty:

Deputy Coffey made some very good comments. There is a real problem which must be recognised that Moneypoint has to be replaced. It is very big, much bigger than Great Island. Coal must be discontinued and there is no solution clearly decided at this point for what will replace Moneypoint.

Interconnection, which was raised by Deputy Colreavy, is there in the background. Whether there is interconnection or not, there are issues about how much generation we must have in this country in any case.

I recognise completely the elephant in the room, as mentioned by the Chairman and as emphasised by Deputy Moynihan, is that public acceptance would be enormously difficult to achieve. There is a strong element of burying one's head in the sand in stating that, because public acceptance would be a problem ten years from now, we will not even think about it and we will rule nuclear energy out and hope that something will turn up to solve our problem when on the face of it, technically, and, we are fairly confident, economically, nuclear energy would be a valid solution. Our plea is to recommend that nuclear energy be considered as part of the planning of energy.

The problem of section 18(6) of the 1999 Act is, I would say to Deputy Colreavy, a chicken-and-egg situation. One could say we can do all this looking at it and leave that provision there, and that could happen. The reality is that there has been no official agency because of that provision, which considers it to be within its responsibility to look at whether nuclear energy could be a good idea. That is why it is left to a purely voluntary group such as ourselves to bring the subject forward at all. This is a real deficiency in public planning. That is why we believe it is important that the committee recommend at least that nuclear energy be included on its merits as part of the consideration of energy planning and, ideally, that the section of the 1999 Act to which I refer would be repealed, in the short term rather than in the long term.

There were one or two other points. I mentioned the interconnector. On the backup that Deputy Colreavy raised, there always has to be in the generation system enough back-up so that if any station is lost, either for a short time or even for many months, the system can carry on. Obviously, there would be a cost penalty in losing a big station but there must be provision to keep the lights on.

As to who would meet the cost, it would have to be a commercial proposition funded, we believe, by the private sector, by a nuclear supplier from abroad or by a consortium of that kind as in the case of the UK currently. There are many arguments about what is the best way to do that.