Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

I look forward to an all-Leinster all-Ireland hurling final in a few weeks between Dublin and Kilkenny.

On 4 June, the Public Accounts Committee in Westminster received and considered a damning report on the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility in Cumbria. It heard of a crumbling site where there is a suboptimal workplace culture, where the clean-up will take 135 years at a cost of £135 billion and where there are intolerable risks. It is our next nearest neighbour. It already has a pretty damning track record, notwithstanding the nuclear industry in the UK and the potential nuclear new-build projects that are going to be located at Hinkley Point. It is important for the Minister for the environment to engage with his counterpart in the UK. The regular meetings that used to be held with the Environmental Protection Agency and Euan Hutton, the CEO of Sellafield, need to be made public.They need to engage in a much more proactive manner in relation to what is a really damning report about the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility for its previous track record down the years since 1957. It was then called Windscale and it had probably one of the worst nuclear accidents in history prior to Chernobyl. The Irish Government needs to have a say in what happens there, needs to be proactive and actually hold the British Government to account as to what is happening there. The report that was presented to the PAC in Westminster a few weeks ago was pretty damning. We talk about accidents waiting to happen. This is one that is waiting to happen on our doorstep. We need to have a say in its future.