Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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652. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if radiation from the Fukushima site has been detected here. [12974/14]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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While my Department has overall policy responsibility for nuclear safety issues, the monitoring of radioactive contamination in the environment is one of the functions assigned to the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII).

In this regard, the RPII carries out a rigorous and continuous testing programme to monitor environmental radiation and to ensure that the Institute and my Department are quickly aware of any change in environmental radiation levels in Ireland, and are able to provide the public with any necessary health warnings and protection advice. The testing programme combines round-the-clock measurements from the permanent monitoring network and a programme of sampling followed by laboratory testing. Measurements are taken from the air, the marine environment, food products and drinking water. Data from these monitors is continuously fed back to a central system at RPII and displayed on the RPII’s website:

Following the incident at the Fukushima site, my Department’s National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management, in conjunction with the RPII, monitored the unfolding events in Japan. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, a national co-ordinating group, comprising the relevant Departments and agencies on the Emergency Response Co-ordination Committee, met a number of times to co-ordinate the response, inter alia, in the areas of food imports, general imports and travel advice.

Following the incident at Fukushima, the RPII detected trace amounts of radioactivity in samples taken during the period March to May 2011, but the amounts here were at levels so low as to be only detectable with highly sensitive radio-analytical instrumentation. As such, they were of no radiological significance in Ireland and accordingly, no protective measures were required. The levels detected were consistent with those measured elsewhere in Europe.

The RPII’s Assessment of the Impact on Ireland of the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Accident, published in March 2012 and available on the RPII website, concluded that the accident provided a good test of Ireland’s capacity to respond effectively to a nuclear emergency. It demonstrated that a comprehensive monitoring network, capable of measuring even trace levels of radioactivity in the environment, is in place.

My Department participated fully in the international response to the Fukushima incident and used the opportunity afforded by the EU Decision on stress-testing nuclear power plants around Europe to push for the highest safety standards to be applied.