Green Party Senator Mark Dearey has welcomed new regulations to control recreational activities in sensitive nature areas like along the River Boyle, in the Baltray Boyne estuary area and on Bettystown and Laytown sand dunes.
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Dearey says conference highlighted New Threats from Sellafield
Speaking after last Friday's Nuclear Free Local Authorities(NFLA) morning seminar on Sellafield held at the Carrickdale Hotel, Cllr Mark Dearey expressed his concern at the prospect of a new underground nuclear repository being built in Cumbria and at a proposal from the company charged with managing Sellafield, Nuclear Management Partnership, to build an incinerator that would burn a mix of domestic and low level nuclear waste .
"These ideas are being explored at present and Cumbria County Council have expressed interest in exploratory testing for suitable geology. So it was important that the proposals were highlighted here in Ireland and that local authorities from along the Eastern seaboard in particular are aware recent developments at Sellafield."
Minister for the Environment John Gormley who gave the opening speech reaffirmed Ireland's firm position in regard to Sellafield and gave a commitment that in the event of the Lisbon Treaty being approved in a future referendum, that he will seek to have the Conference of Member States to reveiw of the Euratom Treaty(as envisaged in declaration 55 of the treaty) held here in Ireland.
Cllr Dearey claimed this was a significant move. "The Euratom Treaty puts nuclear power at the heart of European energy policy. A conference of all EU member states, held here in the country with the greatest renewable energy sources in Europe would clearly indicate that green energy is the way forward and that despite all the talk of a new nuclear build, stations are closing more quickly than they are being replaced. In any event it would take 15 years to get such electricity onto grids round Europe which is far too slow to replace fossil fuel energies we currently rely upon. We need to use the declaration in Lisbon to create new energy sources such as wind and tidal that Ireland can massively benefit from, as opposed to the nuclear priority which has given us so much grief going back five decades"