Mr. John O'Connor:

I have always believed that public consultation is essential, especially in the modern world. The environment belongs to everybody and everybody should be entitled to express their view. I read the Official Report of the committee’s meetings with delegates from various places on this topic. I was somewhat disappointed. There was a range of views. Some people felt there had been reasonable consultation, others not. I would be disappointed to think that people felt that they did not get a hearing. Eirgird has an extensive consultation procedure. People should not jump to conclusions. All of those points have been made and issues raised during the consultations, including the contributions made at this committee.

Those contributions will all feed into the public consultation process. It will then be up to EirGrid to consider each issue and we will have to deal with each one in a fully transparent and honest manner and respond to them. I would not like to prejudice the response at this stage but Eirgird will have to deal with each issue raised. People should not rush to judgment about the consultation process until they at least read the report on it and what emerges from that. I ask people to wait and see what comes out in the reports of these various consultations and EirGrid’s response to them. They will then be in a better position to judge whether EirGrid has listened to them.

The issue of putting the cables underground in the Grid25 project was put strongly in the consultations and is being dealt with as we go along in the various stages of the reports and consultations. That is the way to deal with it. There has been much detailed study of underground cables for the North-South interconnector. I will not pass judgment on that because I am only coming into the job now. A lot has already happened. This issue has been put very forcibly and EirGrid will have to respond to it in whatever way is considered necessary to convince people that we are coming up with the best solution.