Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have appointed an independent panel of experts, chaired by Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness, a former judge of the Supreme Court, to decide terms of reference for comprehensive, route-specific studies of fully underground and overhead options for EirGrid's Grid Link and Grid West projects.

The panel will ensure that the studies are complete, impartial, objective and comparable. Both the overhead and underground options will be published side by side, in objective and comparable terms, before consideration is given to appropriate next steps. On the North-South transmission line, the situation is different. Planning for this project has been under way for the past ten years. A planning application has already been submitted for the part of the project in Northern Ireland and that planning process is in train.

Detailed studies have already been conducted, most recently by the independent international commission of experts appointed in July 2011. A route-specific underground analysis was conducted by PB Power, which found that the cost of undergrounding would significantly exceed the cost of the more usual overhead cables. The PB Power analysis was considered and confirmed by the independent commission, which estimated that the cost of undergrounding would be at least three times that of overhead cables.

The North-South transmission line is a critical and strategically urgent transmission reinforcement and is of vital importance in the broader North-South context. As well as reinforcing the grid in the north-east region of this State, the transmission line will be vital to maintaining the security of electricity supply for Northern Ireland into the future. I met with my Northern Ireland counterpart, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Ms Arlene Foster MLA, to discuss the very real security of supply concerns that would arise for Northern Ireland from any significant delay in progressing this project, and to assure her of our continued commitment to timely delivery.

I have previously said I recognise the public would be reassured if they knew that the overhead and underground options for North-South were both investigated and that the published studies are sufficient to enable a similar comparison be made by An Bord Pleanála in deciding on the merits of this planning application.

When I met Mrs. Justice McGuinness I accordingly asked her to consider what work, if any, the panel might usefully undertake to establish whether there has been parity of treatment between the North-South project in terms of the work already undertaken and the issues the panel will examine in respect of Grid Link and Grid West. Mrs. Justice McGuinness has since convened the first meeting of the panel and she has undertaken to raise with it what, if anything, it can do to help.

Another very relevant factor is that the North-South line has been designated at EU level as a 'project of common interest', one of 248 key trans-European energy infrastructure projects listed as such. It seems now to be clear, although I have yet to receive formal confirmation that, because of this status, the planning application will be subject to enhanced principles for public participation, which are set out in EU Regulation 347 of 2013, published in April last year. It is too early to say to what extent this enhanced form of public participation in the planning process - which I stress will apply to the North-South project alone - might meet the concerns of the public and, perhaps, make separate and additional deliberations by another body both unnecessary and otiose.

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