Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, am surprised at the outright admonishment of this amendment. In our own lives, we all have to be cognisant of our neighbours, who are better than family to many of us. Amendment No. 1 proposes to the insertion of "including safety implications arising from neighbouring states nuclear programmes” after the word “fit”. We have to do this. What is the point of having agencies if we do not insist, as we are entitled to do, that we have proper input into what goes on? We are not discussing some industrial building; it is a nuclear plant. We have a desperate and tragic history in this regard and we do not want it repeated. I do not see how any neighbouring state would not welcome an input from us.

In fairness, any planning application for a major industry must have an environmental impact statement and outside evaluation. While we have changed this in order that projects go directly to An Bord Pleanála, all the experts are wheeled in nonetheless. I do not pretend to be an expert but I know that we learned a costly lesson. We must ensure we do not have any more costly lessons. We must ensure that our voice is heard, that our agencies are fit for purpose and that we are not depending on our non-governmental organisations to go out in ships and flotillas to bring this matter to media attention. We need to be awake, to have our antennae up, to be cognisant of what is going on around us and, above all, to have an input in order that there would be safeguards in place for our people if anything were to go wrong.

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