Public confidence in the State's ability to respond to a nuclear emergency has been dented since the Minister of State with responsibility for nuclear safety, Mr Joe Jacob, took to the airwaves last week. His aim may have been to reassure people but many listeners were left wondering whether the plan which he hailed as "state of the art", and the best in Europe, constituted a plan at all.
Such suspicions were reinforced by the debacle over the (non-)availability of adequate stocks of iodine tablets, whose use is recommended in certain emergency cases.
The Department of Public Enterprise, which has responsibility for the plan, has said it intends to publish an updated version in the coming weeks, which would address the weaknesses which have been identified. The Department stressed, however, that a plan does exist - and can be enacted - at this moment.
Contrary to opinion in some quarters, the plan - the National Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents, to give it its full title -is not designed to deal with every possible nuclear, let alone biological or chemical, threat to the State. It was first drafted in 1992, in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, specifically to prepare the State for an accident at a nuclear installation in the UK or elsewhere.
As Dr Tom O'Flaherty, chief executive of the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII), explained: "A nuclear bomb falling on us would be outside the scope of the plan, although the plan could conceivably be used to protect areas outside of the direct zone of impact."
What the plan is designed to deal with are nuclear "events", which are classified under an international scale of significance, ranging from one (anomaly) to seven (major accident). (The 1986 Chernobyl incident had a ranking of six, or "serious accident".)
The plan allows for notification of an incident by a number of means. Under international conventions, overseas governments should first contact the Garda S∅ochβna headquarters in Dublin, which in turn should notify local agencies, including an RPII duty officer who is on 24-hour call.
A Department spokeswoman said this link was "vigorously maintained" and repeatedly tested in simulations.
The other primary means of notification is through the RPII's national radiation monitoring network. Some 12 sampling stations have been set up around the State, mostly on the same site as Met ╔ireann meteorological offices. Each monitor measures gamma dose rate levels every 20 minutes and if they are found to exceed 50 per cent above background levels, an alarm will be sounded and the RPII immediately informed.
After the alarm is raised, the Emergency Response Co-ordination Committee (ERCC), which is chaired by a senior official, normally a principal officer, in the Department of Public Enterprise, is supposed to meet at the RPII's headquarters in Clonskeagh, Dublin, to consider an initial response. Among those represented on the committee are local health boards, the Coast Guard and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
Under the plan, the RPII should in parallel begin analysing the information it has received. If required, trained monitoring teams of the Civil Defence can be mobilised to undertake further measurements with portable metres and collect grass and soil samples for analysis.
According to the Department spokeswoman, the ERCC should make its first public statement within half an hour of first notification. "In the initial stage," she said, "any advice would be most likely to be of a precautionary nature."
As time progresses, and more information is collated, the ERCC should issue further instructions, including, for example, advice on the consumption of food and water, and on whether people should come forward for medical assessment or treatment.
A misconception which emerged last week was that telecommunications would be wiped out in a nuclear accident. But such an effect only occurs where there is a nuclear explosion with the energy surge from the blast causing a blackout.
As regards counter-measures, the plan lists four main actions which can be taken: evacuation from a contaminated area (this might apply if a nuclear submarine crashed close to the Irish coastline); sheltering; control of foodstuffs and water supplies; and distribution of stable iodine.
The latter has attracted most attention due to the discovery that there are fewer iodine tablets in health board stores than the Government thought there were. But Dr O'Flaherty stressed iodine was an effective counter-measure only in the case of major accidents and was more important for children and younger people, with developing thyroid glands, than for adults.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Children said yesterday that negotiations had begun between it and suppliers over the pre-distribution of iodine tablets to every household in the State. An initial estimate put the cost of the initiative, which has been promised as part of a revision of the nuclear emergency plan, at £5 million.