Seán O'Driscoll, the chief executive of Glen Dimplex, yesterday invited the former Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan to the Merrion Hotel in Dublin to address an energy conference.

O’Driscoll, one of the Government’s go-to guys when it consults industry on policy, wants to “spark a debate” about energy policy.

Kan was on hand to politely warn that nuclear power is not the answer.

Kan was prime minister of Japan during the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed a tsunami in 2011.

After the disaster, he did an about-turn on the merits of nuclear power and now campaigns all over the globe against it.

“I had two choices: do nothing about nuclear energy or try to stop it. I chose the latter,” he said. Kan said Japan is now turning instead to renewable energy.

It’s murder trying to get anything major through planning in this country, so there’s surely no fear that some lunatic will try a nuclear power plant. Right?

O’Driscoll, never shy to let fly when he’s in the mood, strongly criticised the Government’s recent Green Paper on energy as “not ambitious enough”. He said the debate is too focused on security of supply.

"We need to focus more on efficiency," he said, plugging the Enernet power efficiency project Glen Dimplex is involved in, with partners including Airtricity, Intel and UCD.

Sayonara to old thinking. . .