Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

Plutonium in children's teeth is double the normal level in the area around Sellafield, according to the British Minister for Health. There is a leaking roof on a storage tank in Sellafield and a strike took place among workers at the plant which put it at risk. Waste pipes from the facility have recently been washed up on the shore and more are missing. A new storage facility for additional nuclear waste at the plant forms an international nuclear dump. There is also the ongoing immediate threat to Ireland of the storage of highly active liquid waste. The classification of that waste, which we were regularly promised, has proceeded at a snail's pace. The sea and air are polluted daily for profit rather than out of need.

Given that we know all that, apart from a legal action taken to a tribunal with no competence in the matter, which ended with the Government being taken to the European Court of Justice by the Commission for so doing, meaning that it has effectively run into the sand, and an occasional press release from the Minister's spin doctors on the matter, we have no other information. Will the Minister tell the House what exactly he is doing to achieve the Government's much-trumpeted objective of closing down Sellafield? He has been two years in his present post, more or less, and we do not seem to have advanced, except for the promised legal action, which has run into the ground.

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