Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

It has some towing capacity, but more of a holding capacity. It is powerful enough to hold a drifting tanker in order to buy time until towing vessels arrive. There is a system in place whereby in the event of a disaster happening off the Irish coast there would be a rapid response. However, one can never say never, when one sees for example what happened in a country like Spain, with all its resources. To a certain extent the consequences of the tanker sinking off the Spanish coast last year were made far worse by prevarication and the late reaction to the incident. Lessons have been learned since then.

On Committee Stage we might have an opportunity to tease out some of the sections but this is essentially a very simple Bill, though very important and timely, because of the potential disasters pending in the years to come.

Question put and agreed to.

Committee Stage ordered for Thursday, 9 October 2003.