Mr. Nigel Hillis:

I am a civil engineer. As a result, I take more of a dispassionate view of this topic while many other people are extremely annoyed about it.

We had a meeting last week in Aughnamullen and feelings ran very high. There were all sorts of things said such as the reason the line is undergrounded in Mayo is it is the Taoiseach's constituency and the reason it is undergrounded in the south is the big farmers and the equine industry while they think they can walk over the small people of County Monaghan. I tend to take a more dispassionate view on it.

The Gunning principles are very important for consultation. They very much go along with the Aarhus Convention and they say that consultation must take place when the proposal is still at a formative stage. Sufficient reason must be put forward for the proposal to allow for intelligent consideration and response. Adequate time must be given for consideration and response and the product of consultation must conscientiously be taken into account. The obvious point of the Gunning principles is that the decision-maker cannot consult on a decision that has been made, otherwise consultation is not only unfair but the outcome has been predetermined and it is pointless. That is exactly what has happened with regard to the North-South interconnector. It was predetermined from day one back in 2007 that it was to be an overhead line. A route was chosen and the position has not changed from that day to this. All the consultation has been pointless because we still have the same route. What is missing from the development is the substation in Kingscourt and, in 2010, at the oral hearing, EirGrid said that the substation was an integral part of the development because the power supply and the quality of electricity in the north east and in Monaghan would be substandard from 2012 onwards.