Fianna Fail promised, in a position paper on the environment released in April, that a case taken by a group of Dundalk residents against Sellafield would be "fully funded". This undertaking went further, saying that if required it would be "appealed through the higher courts".
As recently as yesterday, the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr Ahern, who represents the Dundalk residents in the Dail, promised the Dundalk Chamber of Commerce: "I will use my influence at Cabinet to ensure that whatever assistance that can be given (to the residents taking the case) will be given and that will be happening this week or next."
This promise looks set to cost the taxpayer dearly. There have been 10 years of warnings from successive Attorneys General that any legal action was unlikely to dent the Sellafield juggernaut. And while previous governments held back from committing the State to expensive, open-ended legal efforts, the current Government seems determined to proceed with a case that could drag on for years to come.
Legal sources say that launching into a case that begins in the High Court, gets appealed to the Supreme Court and eventually winds up in the European Court of Justice would cost £1 million - minimum - and work up from there.
The Dundalk residents are determined to fight this one to the bitter end, according to the solicitor representing them, Mr James McGuill. This includes appeals to the European Court.
Their case was launched in March 1994 but BNFL moved to block them. The Supreme Court decided in October 1996 that they could proceed with their case and preparations are now under way for a High Court hearing, Mr McGuill said yesterday.
The group was pursuing both BNFL and the Government in its initial legal approach, he said. The basis of its case against BNFL was that "the activities of BNFL are causing harm" here, both medical and economic.
The case against the State was based on its failure, he said, to protect the citizenry against BNFL's pollution. "The Government didn't take all the steps open to them" to get Sellafield shut down, he maintained. This aspect of the case is expected to be dropped if the Government rows in and lends its backing to the Louth residents.
"Our purpose has never been to be party political. The priority is to take the most successful legal stand to shut done the Thorp plant." If the group wins, "The consequences. . .would entirely change the operation of such plants throughout the world," Mr McGuill stated.
He fully expects the new Government to live up to its promises of help, but he is also annoyed at the delay. "We can't understand how three months into the Government that nothing has happened. There is no room for prevarication."
He believes the failures of successive governments to take legal action against Sellafield were just that, failures. He puts it down to prevarication within Government departments. "The Civil Service is creating difficulties that aren't difficulties at all."
For his part, Mr Joe Jacob, the Minister of State for Public Enterprise, who finds himself responsible for nuclear issues, is scheduled to brief the Cabinet on the Government's options tomorrow. However, this may be pushed into next week by the McCracken report.
"The Minister is arranging at present to brief Government on the complex issues involved and would hope to outline the Government's detailed response in early September," Mr Jacob's Department said.
But what can he possibly say about the legal options that has not been said before by successive Attorneys General? Previous legal efforts have focused on elements of international treaties, such as Euratom, or the use of the International Court of Justice, rather than on the health issues the Louth group hopes to pursue, but the burden of proof on this basis is, if anything, even more difficult.
If Irish residents living 100 miles away from Sellafield succeed in a case proving medical harm, then similar success could be expected by anyone in Britain living within this distance of the plant. Yet a succession of cases in London's High Court taken by people alleging medical harm have failed against BNFL.
Legal dead-ends are not a reason to drop Ireland's absolute and correct opposition to the Sellafield plant, which is of no benefit to us yet which releases tonnes of radioactive wastes into the Irish Sea to eventually wash up on our shores. Nor, however, are we required to embark on a costly legal case which, we have been told by successive governments, we should not pursue because we cannot win.