Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I do not take the benign view on Sellafield of the previous speaker. It is true that our power is limited. Everything possible has been done in the legal process. As there are several nuclear powers in the world, there is limited scope to raise the matter through the various international conventions.

A disaster at another nuclear plant would not have the same impact on the surrounding area. At Chernobyl hundreds of square miles were devastated with lasting health effects. That the waste has to be stored for thousands of years shows that it is peculiarly dangerous material. What we do not want is a complete disaster that will devastate Cumbria and parts of Ireland, be it by terrorist attack or whatever.

A month ago, there was, to put it politely, a malfunction. Reprocessing is unnecessary and uneconomic costing the British state approximately €36 billion. The British taxpayer is a creature I do not understand. How do they tolerate the amounts spent on propping up its nuclear industry? Britain's Labour Party Government is pro-nuclear but that does not mean it has the same commitment to reprocessing. At this stage it is a purely political issue, an employment issue in Cumbria. We must keep alive a sense of the dangers, which are of a quite different order to anything else we have around us.