Would the Minister agree that if an emergency plan existed there were no ways or means of activating it fast enough in relation to the Chernobyl disaster? Would the Minister also accept that the Nuclear Energy Board who work ordinary office hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the event of a disaster at the weekend or late in the evening would not have anyone available to monitor the situation? Was that not the major contributory factor for the misleading statements which went out, that we were not in possession of the facts to be able to give them to the public? Both the Minister and the Nuclear Energy Board differed from time to time over a matter of days as to what the reality was. Is there an emergency plan and what are the provisions of it?

I am sure the Deputy as a former member of the Cabinet is aware of the emergency procedures which exist. They were revised somewhat after the great snow-in of 1981.

Right.

They have been revised and updated. In a nutshell, the Department responsible for activating an emergency plan are the Department with responsibility in the area concerned. In this case the Department of Energy were the Department involved. An emergency plan does exist. In relation to Deputy Reynold's remark that the Nuclear Energy Board work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I assume that in normal situations they have regular working hours but I can assure the Deputy that in the aftermath of the Chernobyl incident they were working far greater hours than the normal office hours. I can verify that by the fact that on the Sunday week after the incident the Nuclear Energy Board were in contact with me at my home in Tralee during the afternoon at about 5.30 p.m. to inform me of the levels of radioactivity in some of the samples they had analysed.

There has been a lot of criticism proffered in the direction of the Nuclear Energy Board but I can say from my experience in working with the officials and the scientists of the NEB in the last number of weeks that they have given of their best. A lot of personal and psychical strain was placed on them because of limited resources etc. I could not fault any of the officials in the assistance they gave me and my officials and that was by night and by day. They worked very hard and much of the criticism was unfair. It was being made by people who were not aware of the efforts that were being made, of the long hours which were being put in or of the sampling that was going on. I know that when I asked for assistance at any time of the day or night, the scientists and officials involved, at great personal inconvenience, were available and willing to come in to do the sampling.