A Pike River spokesperson says "New Zealand should be proud" after the Government confirmed the Pike River Mine would be re-entered as soon as February next year. 

Speaking at an event at Parliament today, the Pike River Re-entry Minister Andrew Little said he had carefully considered the advice of the Pike River Recovery Agency and had decided to proceed with one of three options presented for re-entry to the drift.

"On the basis of all the material I have been presented with, I am satisfied that there is now a safe plan for re-entry and recovery.

"Therefore, today I am announcing that I have approved the single entry plan. Re-entry of the Pike River mine drift will proceed," Little said.

The agency had recommended re-entering the drift via the existing entry. Cabinet this week approved an additional $14 million in funding, taking the total budget for the plan to $36m.

Pike River spokesperson Bernie Monk told Mike Hosking there are still questions which need to be answered. 

"There was a drift runner on the way out.There was 800 metres of black mine not investigated. You have got to remember that two men survived coming out of that mine."

He said the re-entry is incredibly important to bringing justice to the families. 

"Knowing people can go to work and be killed in a workplace and when a commission finds that the people who were ruining the mine didnt' do there job properly, they let those people go in there. Twenty-one times in the last 42 days of that mine it could of exploded and they just continuously let those men go back in."

"There was no justice, no accountability."

Monk said he is very pleased with the outcome and said, "New Zealand should be proud of the way they have treated the families".

The first major task, breaching the 30m seal inside the drift, was likely to begin in February.

Little said much of the preparatory work had been done, such as making new emergency portal doors, restoring power and setting up a nitrogen plant to push out dangerous gases from the mine before oxygen is pumped in.

Little said there was always uncertainty in such projects but health and safety was paramount.

He quoted from the agency's report: "There is a lot we do not know and will not know until we are confronted with the situation as we find it underground. This will require agile thinking, the courage of all to say no if we are uncomfortable, the preparedness to reassess, reset and re-plan when necessary, and knowing when to call it 'quits'."

Little said that since the middle of this year, police had been actively involved in any re-entry plan so they could prepare for any forensic examination and victim identification.

He said the Government, and the three partners that made it up, committed to fulfilling the original promise made to the families, to do everything practicably possible to re-enter the drift and recover any remains and better understand the cause or causes or the original explosion on November 19, 2010.

Discussing the decision to go with the single entry option, Little said safety was paramount. Ventilation was a major consideration.

The other two options, either drilling a bore hole or another tunnel, would also have required a huge number of helicopter movements to remove spoil from the digging.

Next Monday is the eighth anniversary of the tragedy at the mine. Two men survived but 29 died.

LISTEN ABOVE AS BERNIE MONK SPEAKS WITH MIKE HOSKING