Mr. Rodney Doyle:

As the Celtic interconnector will be from what will continue to be an EU country to another EU country, it will qualify for any of the available funding. It has also been recognised in Europe as a priority infrastructure project. As it has been nominated as such, that sets it up in terms of funding. It still needs to qualify, however, on its own merits as a project, which the analysis will show.

There are precedents of interconnections between Poland, for example, and other parts of Europe and into third countries. There are trading arrangements across those interconnections and projects. There are arrangements in place today which work and continue to work between what is seen as the central European market and countries outside of it. It is all a matter of how these so-called third countries accept the rules of the internal energy market in Europe. If they are willing to buy in and accept what goes with it, then one moves forward. If they are not then that potentially is where problems arise. There certainly are precedents there of how it can be done. It also depends on how the parties who are going to sign up to it negotiate and what they agree to do. Consequently, the stance Britain would take on something like the European Court of Justice, for example, would become very important from that perspective.