Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Government on Committee Stage did not really seem to take on board the points Deputy Catherine Murphy and I made on Second Stage. There are two reasons to be concerned and oppose the legislation. We may have a chance to discuss one of these before debate on the Bill finishes today. The Government is rolling in two elements, one of which is an international treaty and the other is the merger of the RPII and the EPA. They should not be in the same Bill and I have a fundamental problem with such a process. I would probably support one of those elements but I do not really support the other.

Radiological protection and ensuring we are adequately protected against radiation, whether natural or generated by the nuclear industry, is a very important business. It is not something that most people worry about much of the time, and I hope we never have to worry about it in a serious way. At any time there could be an accident and radon is an ongoing problem. The issue of potential nuclear accidents is serious, and we all might be running around asking who has the plan if anything serious was to happen. One remembers the major embarrassment for the last Government when it was discovered that the big plan consisted of giving out iodine tablets, staying indoors and hiding under a table. It was not very heartening stuff when we are dealing with something as dangerous as radiation, one of the more dangerous phenomena known to man. We must have a dedicated body for dealing with this issue and not one simply subsumed under the EPA, with no guarantee that its specificity on an issue of crucial importance will be maintained or respected in a new body.

This amendment is really the minimum we could ask of the Government in order to allay such concerns.

If the Minister of State is not willing to grant this, he should at least agree to a separate agency which will be responsible for this area and maintain all the current functions of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland, RPII. If the Minister of State wanted to ensure the RPII is merged with, rather than liquidated and subsumed by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, he would accept this amendment and would have acknowledged its legitimacy on Committee Stage.

He has failed to do that, which causes me concern, to say the least, about this Bill. I do not think we should be doing this. I do not see its value or the savings. When the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy O’Dowd, introduced the Bill on Second Stage, he was very vague about the savings this would achieve. There are no real savings but considerable costs have been incurred in preparing this merger. I heard a figure of €800,000 and the Minister of State has not identified anything close to that sum in savings to be achieved. This is decorative but potentially dangerous because a body we need to watch something important such as radiation and its potentially damaging effects could be endangered. I am interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say to allay our concerns. If he was taking those concerns seriously, concerns that the RPII has strongly indicated, he would accept this amendment. If he does not, I will be forced to vote against this Bill.

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