Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the motion and the all-party spirit of it. I have been with this issue off and on for the best part of 20 years. I have a vivid memory from 1986 when Charles Haughey, as Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil, forged by force of character an all-party motion on the closure of Sellafield. Since then, there has been an all-party position on the subject.

I commend the efforts of successive Ministers. There are three I can recall immediately who pursued this matter with energy – Ray Burke, Deputy Jacob and the Minister, Deputy Cullen. It is an important issue. I declare an extra interest in that my wife has some relatives who live in Cumbria and it is sad that such a facility is placed in such a beautiful part of the north-west of England.

There are three dimensions to this, the micro threat, the macro threat and the economic dimension of the argument. As far as the micro threat is concerned, it is a fact that the beaches around Sellafield are closed to the public. If Sellafield were not a threat to anybody, that would not be the case. There are clusters of leukaemia, both among workers and in the vicinity of Sellafield. As the cigarette companies argued for a long time that cancer had nothing to do with smoking and it was a pure coincidence, I think BNFL has been trying to make an argument of the same type in relation to the leukaemia clusters. I am not in the least convinced.

There has been a poor track record of accidents, with false spin-doctoring of said accidents, going back to the 1950s, which does not inspire great trust or confidence. I have been present at meetings where the matter has come up between the Taoiseach and Prime Minister, who otherwise have very good relations, as we know. The issue seems to be down to the preservation of jobs argument. Sometimes that is a sign that something is on its last legs. I think we would all agree that cleaning up Sellafield is going to be such a mammoth task that it would keep a substantial number of people employed for a long time to come, without continuing proactive reprocessing.

Obviously what we are most concerned about in this country is the danger of a major accident, arising either from a malfunction or from a threat of terrorism, which is clearly very real. It is a huge ongoing threat, and will remain so for decades if not centuries to come. There are suggestions that this is something which has at least been looked at by terrorist groups. For its own sake as much as ours, the British Government's priority should be to secure the place and close it down.