Mark Dearey (Green Party)

I also look forward to a debate on the HSE in which, given the absence of a political presence in health management, I will be able to ask questions about my community hospital, Louth County Hospital, and the justification for its proposed downgrading. I also join Senator Callely but ask that the European Parliament regions to which he referred should include a cross-Border dimension as health service delivery ought to be considered on a cross-Border basis. I note the Strategic Investment Board of Northern Ireland is also keen to consider doing so. Although we are looking at each other across the trench in this regard, we must start talking to each other. Consequently, I add that nuance to Senator Callely's proposal.

I refer to an issue that is of grave concern to me. Nuclear Free Local Authorities is a highly regarded organisation which involves many of the great cities of Britain, including Leeds, Manchester, Glasgow and so on, as well as 11 local authorities in Ireland. It has asked the United Kingdom's nuclear installations inspectorate to investigate reports and documents from the French NGO, Sortir du Nucléaire, to the effect that the new European pressurised reactor, EPR, design proposed for use on the west coast of Britain, together with the Westinghouse design, contains fundamental design faults. It is charged that while they have been designed with a view to creating efficiencies in how electricity is generated, they are incompatible with the fundamental physics underlying how the nuclear core at the heart of a reactor works and that we face, in the words of the NGO, another Chernobyl, should one of these cores become unstable. While this is an extremely serious allegation, I view with great seriousness the fact that Nuclear Free Local Authorities is taking it seriously and has written to the nuclear installations inspectorate in Britain asking it to investigate the assertion. I call for a debate on the issue in the House and on Members to ask the Minister to join Nuclear Free Local Authorities in asking the United Kingdom's nuclear installations inspectorate to investigate closely the assertion that this new European pressurised reactor built by Areva, the French nuclear installations company, is fundamentally unsafe.