Brendan Daly (Fianna Fail)

I do not want to labour the issue, but if one of those nuclear ships coming from the United States to the UK got into difficulties off the south west coast of Ireland, it would have to be dealt with in a very specialised, professional manner. First, do we have the capability to do it? Second, the costs for the State will be enormous. If the convention is to be effective, we must be able to claim back from it fairly quickly. I presume that we would have to do whatever was needed to protect ourselves here and then the coastline and the environment. We would then have to claim it back through the convention. It is such an obscure and complicated mechanism that it would not happen for ten or 20 years. I am not sure when the Kowloon Bridge caused difficulties, but I believe it was in 1987. Now, almost 20 years later, the bill for that has yet to be finally settled. I do not want to get too involved in this, but it is important, especially in view of the negotiations that the Minister mentioned, that we highlight these issues when the convention comes to be examined. That will have to done very speedily given the terrorist attacks, which were not really an issue when this was debated 20 years ago.