Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Question 1115: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the progress to date on creating a group of non-nuclear European States to counter the pro-nuclear lobby in Europe. [19982/07]

John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)
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In March of this year the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government hosted a meeting of Environment Ministers from Iceland, Norway and Austria. They were joined by the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Environment for Germany, who also participated in the discussions on shared concerns in relation to nuclear energy, and its future role particularly in the context of climate change.

The Ministerial Statement after the meeting declared that, while it remains the sovereign right of each country to decide on its energy mix, there were shared serious concerns that nuclear energy is being presented as a solution to climate change. The Ministers said "It is our collective view that the current debate seeks to downplay the environmental, waste, proliferation, nuclear liability and safety issues and seeks to portray nuclear energy as a clean, safe and problem free response to climate change. The inherent risks and problems associated with the nuclear energy option remain and it can not therefore claim to be a clean alternative to fossil fuel."

The Ministerial Statement also referred to the risks associated with the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and to the planned reopening of the THORP Plant. The Ministers called on the UK Government to desist from reopening it, requesting that, at a minimum, the safety case for such reopening be subject to an international expert peer review.

It was agreed that the Dublin meeting had been very productive and worthwhile, and that a further meeting of the Ministers and other interested States would take place in Vienna in the autumn of 2007. That meeting is arranged for 1 October next. I have accepted the invitation of the Austrian Minister to attend and intend to participate fully in pursuit of Ireland's concerns on this subject.