Director of Cancer Registry blames Life style of Louth People for cancer deaths.

``People round here are afraid to mention it, leave alone study its effects. They are too frightening. They just want to pretend it isn't there'' - and it isn't. Its across the Irish Sea, at Sellafield.

``There is Sellafield, directly across the water from us, in breach of EU laws concerning the pollution of the environment; undoubtedly responsible for radioactive pollution of the Irish Sea and air and counties along the Eastern seaboard through oft recorded leaks and emissions of radioactive waste into the sea. Yet it still goes on,'' says Arthur Morgan, a long time campaigner for the closure of Sellafield.

Every year radioactivity accumulates, and it doesn't go away - not for a half life, in the case of plutonium, for instance, of 24,000 and odd years.

``On just one road into Carlingford, 76 people out of some 200 households have died of cancer in recent years! It is a horrific figure. A local doctor in the Cooley peninsula reports 2 or 3 cases a year of cancer in small children - something which a doctor would not expect to find in his practice more than perhaps once or twice in a decade.''

``Our evidence may be anecdotal,'' says Arthur, who is a founder member of the Cooley Environmental and Health Group, ``but that is because the statistics, which should have been gathered, collated and analysed, over the years, by the health boards and Government agencies, have not been. Only in 1994 did the Government set up the Cancer Registry in Ireland.''

But Greenpeace statistics gathered around Sellafield are not anecdotal. They are horrifying.

Cumbria is in the direct vicinity of Sellafield. Greenpeace found the risk of leukaemia in children and youth in Cumbria to be 10 times higher than the national average. A study of more than 3,300 young people in Britain and Ireland found plutonium present in their teeth.

Pigeons were found, 3 miles away from Thorp which had radioactive counts of caesium-137, and alpha emitting plutonium, that they would be classified as ``Flying Radwaste'' and under UK law, would have to be disposed of in nuclear disposal sites.

Lobsters caught off the coast of Sellafield had as much as 52,000 bequerels per kilogram of technetium-99, which is 42 times higher than permitted levels of radioactivity in food. (The half life of technetium is 4 million years). The EU Commission's level at which emergency measures have to be taken is 1,250 Bq/kg. It is only coincidence that these lobsters happened to prefer the east side of the Irish sea to make their living.

A type of wrack, a brown algae in the sea, was analysed 3 years ago, by Greenpeace and showed concentrations of 4,000- 5,000 bq/kg. The concentration of americium-241 in soil samples from Cumbria qualified it to be treated as Radwaste.

As the Greenpeace survey points out, ``Around the stricken Chernobyl reactor, a 30 kilometre zone is prohibited to humans, and no longer used for agriculture. However in the vicinity of Sellafield reprocessing plant, people live, work, farm, fish and swim.''

``In fact no one in Government really seems concerned at all. Emmett Stagg and after him, Bertie Aherne, after repeated radioactive leaks into the Irish Sea, built high media profiles on the issue of closing Sellafield, which only created an illusion of movement. There has been none. `Sound and fury signifying nothing''' says Arthur Morgan, who has campaigned tirelessly for the closure of Sellafield, and takes the view that closure of Sellafield is the main issue in the Leinster EU election next summer, in which Arthur is selected as the SF candidate.

The Government promised to fund the massive expenses of over £300,000 of STAD, (Stop Thorp Alliance Dundalk) a support group of the four individuals taking their case to Europe challenging the continued operation of Sellafield, in the absence of the obligatory Evironmental Impact Study which BNFL never made in Ireland. But subsequently the government far from meeting their costs - has only made excuses for not doing so.

Local councillors and council officials have been no better. At a.public meeting, the Director of the Cancer Register in Ireland, a Dr. Harry Comber himself put the high incidence of cancers in the county, which between 1991 and 1995 were higher than anywhere in the country, down to smoking, and in particular the tobacco factory in Dundalk, which is closed.

Arthur Morgan asked him had he considered Sellafield as a cause. No. He didn't think it was relevant and anyway ``there is no point because we can do nothing about that,'' Comber replied. Arthur, in characteristic style, retorted that ``you can close Sellafield a lot sooner than change the life style of people in the county. It is an appalling indictment that that is the attitude of the director of the Registry himself.''

In fact as Sean Crudden who is Secretary of the Cooley Environmental and Health Group says, ``People are afraid to talk about Sellafield. They would rather pretend there is no problem in case it reduces tourism and business'' Meanwhile the cancer deaths go on.

Many believe that the recent advent of the Green Party, which has consistently opposed nuclear power, into coalition government in Germany, and the announcement that Germany intended to phase out its use of nuclear energy, that the consequent loss of £1 Billion in revenue to Thorp, which at present reprocesses German spent fuel, might provide a conclusive financial argument for closure, where a life and death argument concerning Irish people did not.

But, as always, Britain has another agenda, beyond the mere profitability of its nuclear reprocessing plant. ``Must we wait patiently until the STAD case is heard, may be next year, in Europe, whilst radiation continues to accumulate in our sea and the fish, our farm land and foodstuffs, and in the air which blows across Ireland.

Remember the sheep in Donegal and in Scotland, that could not be eaten because the east wind blew radioactive dust from the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe over Europe?.

``What'', asks Arthur Morgan, ``is everyone waiting for. A nuclear explosion which blows the storage tanks into the sea, and the people of this country into a painful death?''

Is Louth County Council gathering the necessary statistics to prove what is evident to most people? What steps is the Council taking to do something to stop Sellafield? What is the Government doing to force the English Government to close Thorp? Where is equality between nation states in the EU?

Far from doing anything at all, 9 years ago, Ireland signed the protocol which permitted an EU low cost loan to finance the building of Thorp!