Sinn Féin Senator David Cullinane has slammed the Taoiseach's use of emigration to justify the EirGrid project.

Senator Cullinane said: "To justify a project, that is seriously lacking in credibility, by linking it to emigration and unemployment is a cynical means of distracting from the issues surrounding EirGrid.

"Frankly, the Taoiseach is exploiting the jobs and emigration crisis as part of a PR exercise for pylons.

"While any opportunity to provide employment should be welcomed, the reality is that a network of pylons is not a genuine solution to the level of unemployment that produces the mass emigration that we are currently experiencing. That is just spin.

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"In relation to the jobs and emigration crisis, we need an actual and holistic jobs creation strategy. The document that this government presented shortly before Christmas was not a jobs creation strategy. It was a strategy for deficit reduction.

"The EirGrid project needs to be critically analysed. Any such analysis would see the clear need for the carrying out of an independent cost-benefit analysis on undergrounding.

"It would also show that EirGrid's communications strategy up to this point has been centred on glossy presentations, nuanced positions and spin. That has served to compound problems and exacerbate the fears of communities."

(CD)