Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

At the outset, I acknowledge the Minister's intervention with the British Secretary of State on this important issue and I ask him to keep at it. Does he accept that the British energy review will inevitably produce a whole chain of nuclear power plants? In turn, it is almost certain that this will feed in material for reprocessing at Sellafield and therein is the nub of the difficulty with the British energy review. Does he agree with that and the consequences it holds for the Irish people? Does the Minister accept that among the consequences for the Irish people will inevitably be an ever greater health risk to people on the eastern seaboard? Does he accept that cancer rates in my constituency of County Louth are currently running at 20% above the national average and one in five deaths is cancer related? There is no reasonable explanation for that. Is he concerned about the extraordinarily high death rate from cancer and incidences of cancer in the constituency?

Is the Minister considering the establishment of an environmental task force, perhaps in conjunction with the Department of Health and Children, to establish once and for all what exactly is the cause of the high cancer rates? We would be delighted if Sellafield was not the cause because the problem might then be easier to solve. However, at the moment we believe that it is the cause of the problem.

I am delighted the Minister is raising this case with the British at every opportunity. I accept that he is enthusiastic in doing so. However, does he agree that it is not working? We need to join with the Nordic countries and others to form one European group to fight this scourge that is a plague on many countries in northern Europe as well as on our own country on the edge of Europe.

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