Professor William Reville:

Is it? There are 12 members on the board so this comes to €80,000, the same as the figure of savings stated in the assessment. This would be mopped up by expenses of travelling to Wexford. A new advisory committee to advise the new office of radiological protection in the EPA would be established and its expenses would also mop up these potential savings.

I do not know the Government’s reasons for the merger. No one has ever come up with a reason, except making one organisation where there are two. Maybe it is like the followers of Pythagoras in Ancient Greece who were fascinated by numbers. They reckoned the secret to the whole universe was based on numbers and, accordingly, worshipped them. In this case, it seems to be the worship of the number "One" rather than the number "Two". I do not understand the reasons for it.

In principle, there would be no danger of losing expertise in the new body. Our chief executive officer, if the merger happens, will transfer to be the head of the new office of radiological protection. Her contract has been extended through to 2016.

We lobbied for this in order to bed down the new office properly. Dr. Ann McGarry, our chief executive officer, has extensive experience and is extremely capable. We would have been very worried if her contract had been allowed to run out in 2014. The intention had been that it would only be extended for a year and there was a further delay so if the merger happened she could have been in the EPA only ten months before the question of who would be CEO was up in the air again. We were very worried about this and the Department agreed to extend her tenure for a longer period. Other senior members and all staff will transfer to the new organisation so there is no reason to suspect that the office of radiological protection, ORP, in the new body will be depleted in terms of scientific expertise. I do not know what will happen but I see no reason for fear.

On a regular and routine basis the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, RPII, consults with the UK authorities and is reasonably satisfied with the level of information from the other side. I cannot address specific questions on what happened at Hinkley Point in detail. As far as I am aware the ongoing consultations with the UK authorities are satisfactory and this contrasts with the situation years ago when they were loth to give information. The atmosphere has changed and things are more transparent now.