The four Dundalk-based plaintiffs who won a notable victory against Sellafield's operators, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), in the Supreme Court last week characterised the Government's reluctance to support their case as "disgraceful". This may be overstating matters. The Government, itself a defendant in the case against BNFL, probably did everything that was legally possible to support the case but it has certainly been very circumspect in its approach.
The irony is that this Government has been more active than any of its predecessors on the issue of Sellafield and the potential threat it represents to the people of the Republic. Last January, the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Emmet Stagg - to his great credit - travelled to Cumbria to give evidence against a preliminary plan by UK Nirex to store radioactive waste deep underground at the Sellafield site. He was the first Irish minister ever to intervene directly in a British planning inquiry, and his presence underlined the marked shift of emphasis in the approach of the Irish authorities to the nuclear threat from Cumbria.
In retrospect, it is a pity that the Fianna Fail government - flush from its famous victory in the 1977 general election - was not represented at the inquiry that year which led to the £1.85 billion Thorp plant at Sellafield winning approval But then, and despite questionable safety standards, we didn't see BNFL's nuclear reprocessing operations in quite the same way we do now after all, the ESB was planning its own nuclear power station at Carnsore Point. Another two years would pass before the Three-Mile-Island accident in Pennsylvania, which had such a dramatic effect on the future of the nuclear industry, and eight years before the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Throughout the 1980s, there were several more accidents or incidents at Sellafield itself, fuelling public fears about its safety. But apart from issuing the odd statement, successive governments here did much too little; it was this record of inaction on such an important issue that helps to explain why the Dundalk plaintiffs took their case against Ireland and, the Attorney General as well as BNFL. There are indications that they may be prepared to confine their action to the operators of Sellafield, dropping the State as a defendant, and Mr Stagg has said that this would improve the chances of underwriting their costs in an action which is bound to prove both lengthy and expensive.
The Dundalk plaintiffs want the Thorp plant closed down, because of the harmful effects its operation would have on them and, on Ireland in general. But BNFL is relying on a 1994 judgment in the English High Court, which dealt with the same issues now being raised here - and found in the company's favour. In view of the seriousness of, the matters at stake and the daunting costs involved in arguing them in court, the Government must, at the very least, seriously consider more full-blooded support for these plaintiffs; anything less would denote a return to the sorry days of complacency about the threat posed by the nuclear industry.