Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

But they are being done now. I cannot accept the seventh statement. The Minister has appointed an independent panel of experts chaired by Mrs. Justice Catherine McGuinness. I have immense respect for this former Supreme Court judge. Her work will be transparent and the panel's terms of reference will be above reproach.

With regard to the 35,000 submissions that, I assume, oppose the erection of pylons, we import €6 billion worth of fossil fuels every year and we need to offset some of this with renewables. However, if we generate electricity from tidal, wave or wind power in the west, how will it be transported to the other side of the country without a robust national grid of lines and pylons?

Electrons need to flow; they cannot be stored or transported by road, so I think people need to sit down and rethink that one.

The eighth statement is common sense and is a continuation of the seventh statement. The ninth statement ties in with what I have already said on the fifth statement. The tenth and 11th statements are related. It is obvious that EirGrid and the energy providers would not put their customers at any risk through the construction of that infrastructure. In respect of the 2007 World Health Organization guidelines, the National Radiation Laboratory in New Zealand acknowledged in a 2008 report the results of studies that found a weak association between EMF field exposures and the risk of childhood leukaemia, but considered that the results were too tenuous and lacking support from other sources to form the basis of exposure guidelines. Furthermore, the report stated that other recent reviews, including the 2007 WHO review, came to the same conclusion, and found that the data currently available did not justify setting more stringent exposure limits. The WHO also recommended that very low-cost precautionary measures be taken to reduce exposures to magnetic fields.

I can accept the 12th, 13th and 14th statements, but we have to be realistic. In County Clare, we have two of the biggest power lines in the country. These two separate 400 kV lines run from Moneypoint and continue across the country, ending up on the outskirts of the capital. They deliver much-needed electricity to Ireland. I do not hear anyone roaring and shouting about those lines in County Clare, and I have been living there for the last 36 years, or asking for them now to be put underground. A 400 kV high-voltage cable can transport three times as much electricity as a 220 kV cable; therefore, we can reduce the number of 220 kV and 110 kV cables by moving to bigger cables. About 2,000 km of cables are to be upgraded, so the older cables can be removed from lots of places.

No one wants high-voltage electricity cables affecting the landscape, but we have to look at the bigger picture. Do we want no power lines? Maybe we should start a de-electrification process here and we can go back to the candle and the oil lamp. Many people around the country found out how hard it was to operate without power cables 40 or 50 years ago, but when the cables were cut in the recent storms we saw another disaster. Even this morning in parts of Clare we had power cuts from 7.00 a.m to 9.00 a.m. Imagine all those parents trying to organise their children and get them out to school without any power. We have a grid that has to be upgraded and connected to the rest of Europe for security of supply.