Mr. John McElligott:

It is against the backdrop of Mr. Mitchell and I interacting with the European Commission on the PCI issue directly, as members of civil society, that we speak to the joint committee about the matter.

Having an LNG terminal on the Shannon Estuary would be dangerous to people within a 3 mile radius, will sterilise the Shannon Estuary for future development owing to the exclusion zones that would be required around LNG tankers and be polluting. In our eyes, having fracked gas in the energy mix is not acceptable owing to the climate and health issues associated with fracking. LNG terminals are needed in order to import fracked gas into Europe from the USA on a massive scale. We think the PCI approval process is really only motivated by the trade agreement between the United States and the European Union to flood Europe with US fracked gas over any climate consideration.

Project of common interest, PCI, status is effectively a declaration that it is in the national interest to plan, fund and permit the project. Through our years of campaigning, we have maintained that we need proof that the project is genuinely in the national interest but that is still not forthcoming. PCI status also means that the hands of the committee are tied and that we are locked into the fracked gas option before the committee can assess and choose from the best reasonable energy alternatives for the country. This is neither legal nor right. We have discovered that the European Commission only assesses gas projects under the three obligatory criteria of market integration, competition and security of supply. However, by law it must also assess each gas project under a fourth criteria, namely, sustainability. It is illegal not to so do. The PCI regulation defines sustainability as "the contribution of a project to reduce emissions ... taking into account expected changes in climatic conditions". The Minister, Deputy Bruton, seemed to accept he had knowledge of this in the Dáil last Thursday evening when he stated:

I have instructed my officials to ask the European Commission whether the implications of importing LNG, both conventionally and unconventionally extracted, into the European Union have been examined as to the sustainable, secure and competitive energy policy. If not, we have asked that such an examination should be undertaken.

Knowing this, how could he risk approving the project and it going on the PCI list, if that is what he did? We still do not know exactly what was decided in Brussels last Friday because the decision-making is going on in secret, behind closed doors and with no public consultation or oversight. The Agency for the Cooperation of European Regulators, ACER, the opinion of which the Commission must take on board, declared a few weeks ago that the European Commission was not properly considering the merits of the projects in terms of potential contribution to sustainability.

We are in a rules-based process. It would be unacceptable to any right-minded person for the Government to endorse a contravention of EU laws to import US fracked gas into Europe.