Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yes, indeed it has met and it is working away assiduously. The expert panel is probably going into the matter in greater depth than I envisaged. It is an expert committee. As you said, it is chaired by the former Supreme Court judge Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness. We have presented to the group the essence of the response to the public consultation following the concerns people fed back to us. On Grid Link alone there were some 35,000 submissions. The truth of course is that much of this was replication and duplication and so on. There are three or four main issues that people are concerned about. As a result of the expert panel, chaired by Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, a comparative analysis will now be conducted between the cost of undergrounding compared to overhead transmission. Both reports will go out together. People will be able to make a comparison. Both will go to public consultation together.