Britain tonight called on the Irish Government to negotiate directly with it to settle the Sellafield dispute after losing its bid to take the row to the United Nations.
Martin Territt, director of the EC Representation in Ireland
The offer from London came after European judges found Dublin guilty of acting legally by bringing the UN into the wrangle over marine pollution from the Sellafield plant on the Cumbria coast.
The European Court of Justice said Ireland was bound by its EU Treaty obligations to deal with its environmental complaints against London exclusively within the EU and not turn to an external body.
A Department of Trade and Industry spokesman said it was up to Ireland to decide how to respond, but added:
"Substantial improvements in co-operation have been achieved between the UK and Ireland on a wide range of issues affecting Sellafield and nuclear issues generally.
"In the light of these improvements, we hope that Ireland will no longer feel that it needs to have recourse to international dispute resolution, and that issues of concern to them in this area can be settled bilaterally in discussion between the two governments."
Earlier today the European Court of Justice found that Ireland broke European Union law by taking its case to a United Nations tribunal in an effort to get Britain to close the Sellafield nuclear fuel plant.
The European Commission said Ireland should not have complained to the UN tribunal because the dispute concerned mainly EU agreements and should instead have been dealt with by European courts.
The question of which institution has jurisdiction over Ireland's concerns is complicated further because the European Commission is party to the UN Law of the Sea, the maritime agreement that Ireland says Britain broke.
The commission took its case against Ireland to the European Court of Justice, Europe's highest court, which ruled today against Ireland.
Miguel Poiares Maduro
"By bringing proceedings against the United Kingdom within the framework of the convention of the law of the sea, Ireland has breached community law," the court said in a statement.
Earlier this year Advocate-General Miguel Poiares Maduro said Ireland had breached its "duty of co-operation" under EU law by invoking UN dispute settlement procedures, without consulting Brussels.
"The Court has cleared up an important legal point that member states, including Ireland, must use the EU's legal framework to settle disputes," Martin Territt, director of the European Commission Representation in Ireland, said. "Ireland can now bring any complaint it has to the commission in line with the Treaties."
Ireland turned to the UN specifically about the Sellafield mixed oxide plant, which recycles plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
It was built by British Nuclear Fuel following an environmental impact study published in 1993. The plant was completed in 1996, but authorisation to operate it only came in October 2001, after five public inquiries into its economic justification.
Agencies