Mr. Fintan Slye:

To clarify, and this point arose in several other questions in terms of the multiple, the figure of 1.57 is not the multiple for the North-South project.

That 1.57 figure originates from a comparison within the draft strategy we did for the Grid Link project comparing a 400 kV overhead line that runs from Cork to Waterford to Kildare at 1,500 MVA with a 700 MW high-voltage direct current, HVDC, connection between Cork and Kildare.

The international commission appointed by the Government, which reported in 2012 and discussed its findings in this committee, indicated a multiple of three for the cost of undergrounding the North-South interconnector. That was its estimate based on a top-down review of similar projects around the world. We did a bottom-up analysis in the Parsons Brinckerhoff, PB, report which indicated that it would cost an additional €500 million to put it underground. That answers the multiples question.

We have looked at mixing overhead and underground lines for the North-South project, and some of the additional information we supplied to An Bord Pleanála was on whether short stretches up to 10 km of the North-South overhead line could be put underground to mitigate specific local concerns. That information has been submitted to An Bord Pleanála as part of our discussions with it on the draft application in terms of additional information it sought on that project. We are acutely conscious that that is an option we examined.

I apologise to Deputy Conlan if I do not get to answer all his questions. If there are any questions to which we do not have the answers, we will send him those, but in the interests of saving time I will try to get through as many of them as quickly as possible. The first question was on the treatment of the analysis done on North-South versus the analysis done on Grid West and Grid Link and the perception of communities in Meath, Cavan and Monaghan that they were not afforded the same level of analysis as was done on those other projects. I believe that undergrounding has been examined in great detail to a similar level as now proposed for Grid West and Grid Link. To that end-----