A team of TDs and British MPs is to visit Sellafield nuclear waste-reprocessing plant earlier next year to assess security at the plant.
The move was agreed today in Bournemouth, near the end of a two-day meeting there of the Irish-British Interparliamentary Body.
The group, formed of members of the Dáil and the House of Commons, as well as representatives from the Scottish and Welsh assemblies and the administrations in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, staged a debate on Sellafield.
It came 24 hours after judges at the International Law of the Sea tribunal in Hamburg rejected a Government bid to halt this month's recommissioning of a mixed-oxide (MOX) facility at Sellafield.
Committee member Mr Conor Lenihan said the priority for the trip would be to investigate security and assess the possibility of a terrorist-style attack similar to September 11th.
"There are health and safety issues at Sellafield that need to be addressed," he said. "There is a genuine fear among members of our body about the prospects of some form of attack".
Conference criticism of the Sellafield concept was spearheaded by Fianna Fáil TD Mr Seamus Kirk, whose Co Louth constituency lies across the Irish Sea from Cumbria.
He was strongly backed by Plaid Cymru North Wales MP Mr Elfyn Llwyd, who said Ireland's attempts to prevent the MOX facility and bring about Sellafield's total closure was "a stand on behalf of all the people of the British Isles".
But Labour peer Lord Dubs, a former Northern Ireland Office minister, whose home is in Cumbria, urged caution over the nuclear threat, telling delegates: "my understanding is that emissions that might come as a result of the MOX plant are equivalent in radiation effect to one second in a aeroplane.
PA