Sir, Nuala Ahern MEP, (May 23rd), for reasons known to herself, seems to be trying to denigrate the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland. She endeavours to use scientific arguments, currently going on internationally about the biological effects of the Chernobyl accident, as a means to cast doubts on the institute's capacity to make objective assessments of the amounts of emissions from neighbouring nuclear establishments and their effects on the Irish people. However, the one has nothing to do with the other.
The RPII's terms of reference include the following "To provide information to the public on any matters relating to radiological safety which the institute deems fit. The institute's responsibilities are to maintain and develop a national laboratory for the measurement of levels of radioactivity in the environment and to assess the significance of these levels for the Irish population." In conformity with the first of the above responsibilities, the RPII organised the recent conference on Chernobyl, and invited Dr Peter Waight to summarise the current state of knowledge on the medical effects of the accident. Ms Ahern tries to convey the impression that Dr Waight is a spokesman for the nuclear industry, or for organisations that promote nuclear energy. In fact, however, he worked for, and is now a consultant to, the World Health Organisation, the very body that Ms Ahern praises for establishing, "in the teeth of opposition from experts in radiological protection", that thyroid cancer had occurred in children. Neither the WHO, nor the Canadian Department of Health, for which Dr Waight worked, can in any way be described as promoters of nuclear energy.
It is therefore quite wrong for Ms Ahern to use Dr Waight's address in an attempt to tar the RPII with the brush of promoting nuclear energy. It is not the institute's role to assess the biological and medical effects of exposures, accidental or other, received in other countries. It has not shown itself to be influenced by "powerful promoters of nuclear power". As I said in my previous letter, to which Ms Ahern referred in hers, I still believe that the RPII is capably carrying out, in an entirely scientific way, the responsibilities given to it by Government in respect of radiation exposure of the Irish population. I should add that I have no connection with the RPII. Yours, etc., Knocksinna Crescent, Dublin 18.