James Bannon (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gallagher, to the House. I support and second my colleagues' amendment.

Any concession that gives Ireland a vestige of control over a situation that affects our citizens, our health and safety, the safety of our unborn children and our environment is unreservedly welcome. The interim order by the Hague based UN Permanent Court of Arbitration is the first major concession that has been granted to Ireland in relation to the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield. Ireland's other claim, taken last October under the OSPAR convention – an agreement between the 14 north Atlantic states relating to pollution and discharges into the marine environment – in which Ireland sought documents relating to the MOX plant at Sellafield, has been denied. This came to our notice this morning.

Ireland sought a ruling, under the 1992 OSPAR Convention, that it was entitled to a full version of two partially suppressed British reports, one of which deals with the economic justification for the £470 million MOX plant and the other with its likely environmental impact on the Irish Sea. Although the current ruling of the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration is unlikely to affect processing operations in Sellafield in the short term, the court has set the scene for future dialogue and has delivered a rebuke to Britain for not having co-operated fully with Ireland in the past.

The Government did not succeed in its international court bid to close Sellafield, but progress has been made. It is incumbent on us to continue to bring whatever pressure possible to bear on the British Government for closure. We must not rest on our laurels. Following on this ruling, we must actively demand safety information from British Nuclear Fuels Limited, which manages Sellafield, and from the British Government.

I support my colleague, Senator Brian Hayes's, call for Ireland to have an independent observer at Sellafield, on a permanent 24 hour basis. The International Atomic Energy Agency observes the site continually but given Sellafield's proximity to the east coast of Ireland, we must have observers on site at all times.