Mr. Fintan Slye:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. He asked about impacts aside from the health issue around overhead transmission. We seek to minimise any of the impacts in a number of ways. In the first instance we seek to keep new transmission towers 50 m away from dwellings as we site the route. As we engage in the process of routing a transmission line we work with all of the statutory bodies to take into account their concerns in addition to working with specific landowners and communities. Where we site a transmission line or tower on somebody's land, we work with the specific landowner to compensate for the fact that the tower is on the land. We make every effort to mitigate the impact these structures have on the visual environment, and part of that in particular areas of scenic beauty may include undergrounding short stretches of the line and, as the Deputy noted, potentially moving the line as well. We do all this to try to mitigate the impact as we go through the process. Part of this includes taking feedback from the consultation process, and we respond to any of this in detail. That is spelt out in a very open and transparent way, and we articulate in clear terms how we have dealt with that feedback as we go through it.

The Deputy's second question concerned the difference in cost. The figure of a factor of three was stated by the independent panel of experts. Taking the three 400 kV projects I noted on the map and assuming for a second that they could be undergrounded and that one is prepared to live with any technical limitations, it would add approximately €2 billion to the cost of electricity. That in turn would add cost to both household bills and domestic energy bills.