Mr. Mark Foley:

Four points were made by Deputy Carthy. One was an assertion we are using a different approach. We are not. As evidenced recently, we have made a decision in Kildare-Meath to put in an underground cable and we have made a decision in the Mayo-Roscommon region to put in an underground cable. Why are we doing that? We are doing it because we can. We can manage to deliver an underground solution in those regions because we are within the constraints of physics in terms of what is possible. We are not treating Cavan-Monaghan differently. We are up against the boundaries of physics and we cannot put an AC cable underground for the North-South interconnector.

The Deputy mentioned a report which stated an underground cable was technically feasible. That is one thing but is it judicious to put a HVDC cable in the central nervous system of an island's power system? Absolutely not. It will fail and, when it does, it will bring the system down in the two jurisdictions.