Mr. Nigel Hillis:

Deputy Coffey asked if it is possible to underground the route. At present, there is a similar scheme being carried out between France and Spain where they are putting it underground. That project is referred to in the international expert commission's report. The position was there was so much resistance on each side of the border that in 2010, the European Commission decided that it would grant a good deal of the funding to put it underground because it was vital for Spain to have some more electricity coming from France. They constructed an 8 km tunnel, which was finished in April last. The tunnel is two or three metres in diameter and it had to be drilled through the Pyrenees because, obviously, they could not dig it. There is a converter station at each end and the technology they are using is high voltage direct current, HVDC.

One can move electricity any distance using HVDC. There is no problem in putting the North-South and east-west interconnectors underground. They have done it with the east-west one. It can be put underground using that technology. On the cost issue, we would contend that the cost would be more or less the same as the overhead line when one takes all the other issues into consideration.

EirGrid states it does not want to do it with HVDC because it does not mesh into the grid in the same way. In other words, EirGrid must comply with what is called N-1.

If either the existing North-South interconnector or a new one running parallel to it went down, because of a lightning strike, for example, no fuse would be blown and the lights would not go out because the system is such that the power would automatically transfer to the other. However, EirGrid says that with the HVDC running parallel, there would be a serious difficulty in realising such simultaneous interaction if the overhead line went down. The international expert commission pointed out that it is possible to work in parallel without difficulty. There is always a conflict between what EirGrid says and what the commission says. When we met the commission representatives before the production of the historical report, we asked whether they would consider any future technologies coming down the track. They said they could not and that they were allowed to consider only what is currently on the shelf. They said that if they were producing the report in two years, they might be producing a different one. The expert commission's report is two years old this month so it might be appropriate to return to the commission and ask it to re-evaluate on the basis of new technology that was not available two years ago.

With regard to studies on the existing 400 kV lines coming across from Moneypoint, EirGrid commissioned post factostudies on them perhaps 18 months or two years ago. They have not been published yet. Perhaps the committee could look to EirGrid for those studies.