Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I appreciate that the Electricity Regulation Act 1999 prohibits nuclear power generation in this country and that the programme for Government focuses on renewable energy. I completely understand that, but the question relates to any type of consideration given to nuclear. We look at the likes of small modular reactors that create between 50 MW and 300 MW of energy. What I am saying here is that it is not a completely clean source of energy but it is a cleaner source of energy than fossil fuels. If we really want to achieve our climate targets, we need to look at all avenues available to the State. In particular, I look at the small modular reactors that can be built a lot more quickly. They are smaller and not as large in scale as some of the larger reactors we are aware of in the UK and the US. These SMRs are being developed in the UK, across Europe - in Poland, for example - and in the US and Canada, so we need to start modelling out what the benefits would be to the State if we were to go down the route of these potential SMRs.

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