Reassurance is not the word that springs to mind following the Government's limp performance this week on how it plans to protect us against nuclear accidents or terrorist attacks.
Clearly people here are worried after the outrages in New York and Washington but realistically the chances of a terrorist-sponsored second strike in the Republic are remote. Even so, voters do expect the Government to have some coherent response to an attack or - a more likely scenario - a serious accident at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria.
In fact, previous governments have developed and tested a response to a nuclear emergency, despite the impression given by Minister of State Mr Joe Jacob. It was prompted by the Chernobyl accident when there was no system in place to detect radiation and warn the public.
The Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland now operates a network of radiation detectors across the State. These automated devices would warn us if radiation levels rose above normal. The RPII provides 24-hour coverage for this service and the plan includes alerts to the Government, garda∅, army and civil defence who would then warn the public.
It is more likely, however, that we would have some forewarning of a nuclear accident at Sellafield or any of the dozens of nuclear facilities in Britain. This would give us some hours or perhaps days to mount a response.
So what would happen if a nuclear accident occurred and what could we do to protect ourselves?
Accidents at Windscale, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in the US have shown that areas closest to the incident face the greatest danger, with many types of radioactive material discharged.
Heavy materials quickly fall out of the air, leaving two substances in particular to be distributed on the wind, radioactive caesium and radioactive iodine. These could reach us in hours if the wind were blowing in our direction.
Iodine is an essential element in the thyroid gland, located in the neck and if its radioactive cousin is about it quickly congregates in the thyroid. The radioactive form has caused thousands of paediatric thyroid cancers in all the former Soviet states affected by Chernobyl.
The only response is to take iodine tablets which saturate the thyroid with safe iodine and help block absorption of the radioactive form. These tablets must be taken quickly before the radioactive cloud can reach us, a tall order unless there are effective distribution systems in place.
Chernobyl also deposited radioactive caesium across Ireland, so much so that sheep grazed on some upland areas in the North must still be cleared of radioactivity on the lowlands before they can be sold.
In a human context, the danger would be caesium deposits falling into water or food supplies that are later consumed. This would cause a radioactive build-up inside the body and possible later cancers.
The response is to find and use only protected water supplies. Produce harvested after a plume reached us would have to be cleaned as thoroughly as possible to remove any radioactivity on the surface. This would be of little help some weeks later if large amounts of caesium reached us, however. The radioactivity would be taken up into the plant and could not be washed off.
It is much more difficult to protect against a chemical or germ attack because there would be little or no warning until people became ill or started to die. The chemical gas attacks in Japan a few years ago killed rapidly but then dispersed. Airborne chemicals are diluted quickly so unless the toxin is very powerful or unless there is a method to spread it far and wide, as with a crop sprayer, its effects would be limited. An essential aid to survival in all these cases is the earliest possible warning. It would be up to Government to broadcast the alarm and information.