Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The Office of Emergency Planning and the working groups on emergency planning are all co-ordinated under the various emergency services involved in all our contingency plans. The contingency group is chaired by the Minister for Defence, meets frequently and is under his control. It is working well and has set up a superstructure pulling together the people from each area. It is deemed not necessary — I hope it never is — to set it up as a tidier arrangement. It would involve significant cost to do that. We are a small enough area to be able to pull the people from the various groups. As long as it is under one Minister and committee, it works well.

The National Security Committee falls under the remit of my Department. It deals primarily with international issues and with the information that flows to us through Europol and Eurojust. This information flows on a well organised basis since 11 September 2001 which, if it achieved nothing else, at least got the European security system to work well.

We continue our efforts on the Sellafield question. We have engaged a high level group of legal and technical experts to work on the legal case. We continue to pursue the case and the Attorney General has given much effort and time to it. At a recent international conference he set out his full position and gave a full update on the situation. I refer Deputies to his speech on that occasion because it comprehensively pulls together all the aspects of the situation. We are continuing with the case.

As I predicted, for its own reasons the British Government is hell-bent on taking the nuclear route. It tells us that it will be done with the best of security and safety measures, but we are never totally convinced. We continue to make our case. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, and others have outlined our concerns. We have good dialogue with the British on these issues and are able to put forward our case and point of view, but I do not think that will stop them. If France and the UK have decided that their future energy interests lie with the nuclear option, they will continue on that path.

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