Mr. Tom Donnellan:

We answered the question on Edenderry earlier. The plant has planning until the end of 2023. Our plan is to resubmit a planning application for a life after that time. We believe that application would have a reasonable chance, notwithstanding that it will be subject to approval by An Bord Pleanála and all that goes with that. We believe that we have a reasonable chance of continuing. That is our current plan.

Regarding redundancy, our preference is for people to have jobs and employment so we have no compulsory redundancy. Therefore, anyone who wants a job can have a job and anyone who wants to stay in his or her job can do so. The reason we have offered limited voluntary redundancy is that we had a previous scheme that was oversubscribed and a number of people expressed to us a desire to return to college, start up their own company or change career. We are facilitating those people and the current scheme is oversubscribed. The terms are reasonably generous as redundancy schemes go.

We have considered in detail what has been done in Spain and other areas and we believe our redundancy scheme is pretty comparable. The circumstances abroad, especially in Spain, which Dr. McNamara can talk about, are totally different.

On the Deputy's point about communications, we do a lot of work on communication with employees. I have personally addressed all of the employees in the company in the past two weeks. Our head of energy will meet all of the employees next week. I agree with Deputy Nolan that there has been a great deal of uncertainty about the decision on the power plants and what would happen. There was speculation in some quarters that 1,000 or 2,000 people would be laid off. We have responded to that in the past few weeks and clarified the matter. I agree with the Deputy that we now need to clarify the position at an individual level and explain to each of the workers whether they will be eligible for one of the 210 redeployment jobs. I anticipate that people will know by 16 December whether they will have a redeployment job or qualify for voluntary redundancy.