The British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, said a letter sent by the British Minister for the Environment and Rural Affairs, Ms Margaret Beckett, to the Government was factually accurate, and that the MOX authorisation procedure was ongoing.
"The allegation of bad faith on the part of a senior politician is to be regretted and I hope this will be addressed by Ireland tomorrow," he said.
Mr Phillipe Sands, professor of international law at the University of London, said Ireland had, among other rights, a right to have the United Kingdom prepare a "proper and up-to-date" environmental assessment report. "Each right will be violated if the plant is commissioned on December 20th," he said.
He told the tribunal that to grant Ireland's request for "provisional measures", it has only to satisfy itself that Ireland has rights under the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea that would be "irreversibly eroded by the MOX plant".
Mr Vaughan Loewe, professor of international law at the University of Oxford, and also appearing for Ireland, criticised the United Kingdom's "patronising assurances that Ireland has nothing to worry about".
In his opening remarks, the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, said the Irish case was a "last ditch attempt" to stop the authorisation of a plant "that has been cleared at every level" including the European Commission.
The British Government presents its main case today.
A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which has responsibility for the nuclear industry, insisted the British Government acted correctly throughout the process of deciding the economic case of manufacturing MOX at Sellafield and subsequently, writes Rachel Donnelly in London.
"There has been no attempt to frustrate this process," the spokesman told The Irish Times.
"There are plans for plutonium commissioning for mid to late December and we expect to have Ireland's application sorted out before that. We have got our own belief that the process has been followed correctly."
Asked about Mrs Beckett's remark that "the authorisation procedure for the MOX plant has not yet been completed" which Minister of State Mr Joe Jacob quoted in his letter of October 24th, a spokesman for the British Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was the case that full authorisation for MOX had not yet been obtained.
