In my role as a TD, I have had direct involvement on behalf of local communities in respect of the location of wind turbines in various locations throughout County Laois, and some of those developments also impacted on neighbouring counties such as Kilkenny and Carlow. Many years ago, the first involvement I had on behalf of a community was regarding a wind farm called Gortahile in Rossmore, which is overlooking County Carlow but very much in County Laois. When that application came through, the developer was proposing to put a wind turbine within 300 m of the nearest house. I objected very strenuously, and the community and I were united at that time. We met the developer and told it two words: "Go away". It went away and came back a year and a half later, by which time it had moved the turbines to well over a kilometre away from any house. It dropped a few of them. It listened and now we have seven or eight turbines in the place, working and generating good renewable energy. The turbines are well over a kilometre from houses. I stress these wind turbines are much smaller as the ones we have now. The community was satisfied and it is working satisfactorily. The developer listened to the local community and is to be commended. This is the only good success we have had with wind turbines in County Laois. It is on the Carlow border and overlooks County Carlow, and I am happy to acknowledge the work Deputy Jennifer Murnane O'Connor from Carlow has done in this regard. In more recent years, we had a big application for an area called Coolglass, which is between the back of The Swan, up to Wolfhill and across to Timahoe. After a lot of public consultation, it was agreed by the executive and Laois County Council that the area where the application was submitted and other parts of the county were not areas for consideration for wind farms. The regulator looked at the plan, made no comment and was happy with this inclusion. The Minister looked at the plan when it went to the Department and said there was no problem with it. However, a developer came along and made an application for an area that was specifically marked as not for consideration. This shows how little regard there is for local democracy, when this was approved at local level and all the way up the line. I have noticed something that is a very bad precedent that we have to watch. If a development in future is quite small, it can go through easily but if it is of a particular scale, it might be considered strategic infrastructural development, which involves a different process. I have an example of a number of turbines in one location that were joined by one cable to a number of turbines in another location and they are now considered one application. If this trick is done by the developers, they can have small clusters, link them all with a cable and say those are national strategic infrastructure. They would then be able to go through a different planning process. This is not satisfactory and we have to be watchful of this. The public consultation for the wind farm proposal I mentioned was a leaflet drop to some houses in the area. There was no public meeting. No one ever came to a meeting, so they have shown contempt. At that time, I objected strenuously, as did the whole community. Laois County Council refused the application. I went to An Bord Pleanála, which is now An Coimisiún Pleanála, which also turned it down, and rightly so. The developer went for a judicial review. In the court, the judge told An Coimisiún Pleanála - which had refused the application - to go reconsider its decision. He did not overrule it, but told An Coimisiún Pleanála, in the clearest way possible, to reconsider its position. That left An Coimisiún Pleanála in an awkward position because it did not know whether what it came back with would stand up in court, and rightly so. The matter was then referred to the Supreme Court. This is going to set the precedent for all of Ireland in the context of what local authorities and An Coimisiún Pleanála should do in respect of these cases in the future. There will be certainty - that might be good or bad, we do not know yet - once the Supreme Court makes its decision on this application. An Coimisiún Pleanála will know how to proceed in the future. This is a very important case that is before the Supreme Court. We all have to watch the outcome of that very closely. Let us hope that it will be in line with what An Coimisiún Pleanála did in the first place by not granting the application. The most recent case in County Laois relates to the Laois-Kilkenny border. It is called the Seskin application. A great deal of work has been done in that area. Again, my principal objection to this application and all the others relates to the fact that they involve the net export of energy out of Ireland. It is not the function of any local authority, An Coimisiún Pleanála or the Government of Ireland to directly facilitate private investors - Irish, English or those from Hong Kong or wherever - in order that they can make profits on the backs of people in Ireland. The export of energy through the Celtic interconnector to France and Europe is purely for the profit of the developers. There is no gain in this for Ireland. We are talking here about surplus energy that will be exported and that will not be produced for the benefit of Ireland. This reminds me of what is happening in some places in China where people are working for little or nothing to produce the clothes many of us here are wearing. Those people are being abused, many individuals are making a profit and we are getting the benefit of the cheap clothes. That is the exact situation in this instance. The investors to whom I refer are going to sell a product cheaply into France on the backs of the Irish people who are going to have to tolerate wind turbines, shadow flicker and everything that goes with that. We have to be careful in that regard. After the 45-year period - ten years for planning to get it directed and a lifetime of 35 years - who is going to guarantee where the turbines are going to go? They will be left like a blight on the landscape for generations to come, and people will be amazed that we facilitated this. There is a proposal for community ownership of this. There should be a community gain and a community benefit. It should not just be a case of buttering up the local people. I would be concerned that if there is something left in 40 years' time, whoever the trustees or the local investors are could be held liable for the clean-up costs. If you are an owner, you could be caught for costs. Things can go wrong over the years. I would like to see a community gain rather than community ownership. All in all, I welcome this debate. We have a long way to go. We are not here to facilitate people in benefiting from putting wind turbines in our areas too close to our houses. I am all for turbines in the right locations. To those who say that we are going to have offshore generation, I heard at my committee meeting that it will be 25 years before offshore energy is produced by wind farms. Do not listen to any guff saying that this is a real option in the near future. We have to make sure we have sustainable energy for ourselves. We are not here to export cheap electricity to other countries from which we will get no gain, other than having to tolerate wind turbines, shadow flicker, the noise and everything else. We are not here to allow some people to make a fortune on the backs of the Irish people.

Sentiment score: 0.15