Mr. Paul McDonald:

In response to the question of storage, there has been some discussion about geological disposal facilities, GDFs, and how the UK would manage the waste coming from the nuclear industry. Consultations have commenced within the UK to enable stakeholders and members of the public to submit comments on the GDF programme. At this stage they are of a very general nature, and are appropriate to an internal UK audience.

At present there are no proposals to site one of these geological disposal facilities on the island of Ireland. Following a number of unsuccessful attempts to identify a long-term facility, the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills launched a consultation paper on how better to engage and represent communities across England and Northern Ireland in any future process to consider siting a geological disposal facility. The consultation paper notes that the process to identify and select a site for one of these facilities requires detailed technical work that would be estimated to take somewhere between 15 years to 20 years. That is the sort of timescale we are looking at.

Even if a community proposal won public support in Northern Ireland, we are talking about a long-term game here. The final decision on whether there would be a geological disposal facility for radioactive waste would be a decision for the Northern Ireland Executive as a whole, taking into account the various planning and environmental considerations. I assure the committee that the question of the management of waste, particularly the GDF programme, is a standing agenda item at the UK-Ireland contact group I mentioned previously, which comprises officials from the various Departments and the regulators and which meets twice-yearly. This is something we keep our eye on and we get regular updates from central government. I emphasise that we are at the very early stages of the process, which could take somewhere between 15 years and 20 years.