Pat Gallagher (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

I will take this debate on behalf of the Minister.

The Deputy asks if the Minister still intends to proceed with the Corrib gas pipeline. The Minister is not developing the Corrib project. Shell E&P Ireland is developing the project on behalf of the project partners. Whether or not the project proceeds is primarily a matter for Shell. The Minister has worked tirelessly to address the concerns of all, in particular the local community, with regard to this project. The Minister instructed that a comprehensive review of the health and safety aspects of the proposed Corrib gas onshore pipeline be undertaken in July 2005. Advantica was appointed in August and commenced work on 1 September 2005. Two days of oral hearings were held under the chairmanship of Mr. John Gallagher SC on 12 and 13 October 2005. The Department published the draft report of the safety review last Thursday. This report is now being studied by the developers and other concerned parties.

After 22 December, the authors, Advantica, will consider any comments received by that time and will proceed to prepare their final report. Following receipt of the final report, the Minister's technical advisory group will make recommendations on the project to the Minister and he will make his decision based on these recommendations.

The draft consultants' report makes a number of recommendations which Shell is considering. Only if Shell decides to implement those recommendations and any others which the Minister may impose on the company following advice from his technical advisory group is it conceivable that the project, as then configured rather than as currently proposed, could receive consent to proceed. The consultants' report in its current draft states that the pipeline as proposed has been designed to meet or exceed appropriate standards and to best national and international practice. Advantica also states that safety considerations were properly taken into account during the design stage. The draft report makes a number of very specific recommendations for the construction and operation phase of the pipeline.

There are other inaccuracies in the Deputy's statement. Advantica's report does not state that the design pressure cannot be tolerated; it states exactly the opposite. It then goes one step further by stating that limiting the operating pressure to 144 bar will greatly increase safety for local people above the design level which itself exceeded the international norms. The feasibility of the reduction to safer levels of pressure is not questioned in Advantica's report. Advantica does not detail how this should be done and it shall be for Shell to submit proposals for achieving this should the company decide to proceed with the project and for the Minister to have these evaluated. The Advantica report finds failings with the documentation dealing with valve control systems, and so it was not demonstrated to Advantica that satisfactory designs exist. Shell has to provide such satisfactory evidence. The absence of satisfactory documentation does not lead us to the conclusion that it is not feasible to achieve the appropriate pressure reduction. The Minister fails to understand why the Deputy has made a connection with the damaged facility in Hertfordshire in England. This was an oil products storage facility, not a refinery, as the Deputy stated. It was not a gas installation. Shell's only interest in it was that its products were stored there in the past. Does the Deputy seriously mean what he has implied in his wording "...considering the refinery explosion in Hemel Hempstead in which Shell was involved also"? Does he seriously mean to imply that Shell was somehow involved in the explosion? I will give him the benefit of the doubt on this occasion, but this is just another case where ridiculous efforts have been made to try to establish the most tenuous of links between various parties and Shell.

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