Dr. Kyla Tienhaara:

I am not aware of the specifics regarding the investors involved in those terminals. If they are investors that can claim to have any sort of office - it does not need to be the main headquarters but some kind of operation through which they are using it to invest in to Ireland - that is in an ECT country, then those facilities are completely protected. I should also note that an investor does even not have to wait until the terminal is built. If the terminal it built was phased out, that would also be covered by the ECT. Many of these investor-state disputes are launched even before something is actually built, depending on how far along they are in the process of developing a project. The Keystone XL pipeline, for example, does not come under the ECT. Rather, it comes under the provisions of very similar North American Free Trade Agreement. That pipeline has not been built. The company was still in the process of getting all the permits and so forth, but it can still bring a case and it can be not only in respect of the money that was sunk into the investment up until that point, it can also relate to the profits that it expected to make over the duration of the infrastructure being in place. With a terminal, I would expect that to be quite a long period - of 20 to 30 years' duration at least.