I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on this very important Bill. I do not support the amendments. It is important that we get this legislation passed and allow critical infrastructure to be built in the quickest possible time. I hope the Minister will have an opportunity to visit Ardnacrusha power station some day. To give some background to that, in 1896 a young engineer who had qualified through UCD was over working in the province of Pomerania in Germany. His name was Thomas McLaughlin and he came back home to Ireland at Christmas in 1923 aged 27. After being with his family, he spent the Christmas period trying to convince various Government Ministers - I will not try to name them - that a hydroelectric scheme similar to the one opening in Pomerania that year could be done in Ireland on the lower River Shannon. Given the differential in flow from the Galway area down to Killaloe and further down to Parteen, he said this could work in Ireland. In December 1923, the Government accepted what a 27-year-old bucko, who was home on holidays from Germany, had to say. Construction started 18 months later and Ardnacrusha took just four years to build, with 5,000 workers. During those years, we saw an influx of workers into our area, including a huge number of German contractors via the Siemens-Schuckert company, and a large cohort of 1,000 people from the Connemara area. During that period, our local club won its only county title in those years. The match report stated there were four languages heard on the pitch that day, English, Irish from the Connemara men, German and bad language. On a serious note, this proves that in the early years of this State, coming out of the Civil War with all the strife those years brought, and the economic uncertainty we were facing into, and with a population not knowing what their future held, we were able to build the biggest public project in our country, the likes of which has never been surpassed in the past century. That is a template for what we should be doing. The meeting Thomas McLaughlin had with the Government that Christmas is commemorated on a plaque at the entrance of Ardnacrusha power station. It is wrong that key projects are being held up year after year. I was elected to my local council at the age of 21 in 2004. There was joy in the area that summer because land had been acquired to build a sewerage scheme. I am sad to say that 22 years later, it has not been built. The Government has been actively working on it but it needs to benefit from this legislation. There are so many projects, not just in Clare but in every constituency, that could benefit from this legislation. I could rattle off a list of them. I read recently one of the Minister's statements, which I hope to convey correctly. He said that when this legislation passes two of the test projects he would like to see were the redevelopment of the GPO site and the redevelopment of the National Concert Hall.

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Those are to be administered by a different organisation. It is important that other projects also move at pace. University Hospital Limerick dominates so many debates in the House, whether at question time or during questions to the Taoiseach. I would like to see that project, above all others, progressed and advanced. A balance needs to be struck between advancing critical infrastructure and public projects and listening to the voices of objectors. It concerns me hugely that just this week, a large wind farm company objected to, and had overruled, planning permission that had been granted to a private family for a private dwelling just outside Thurles, County Tipperary. The reasons it opposed planning and put the family through the wringer of An Coimisúin Pleanála had nothing to do with the principles of renewable energy or wind turbines and their rotational impact. The objection dealt with the county development plan and the entitlement the family would have, as local rural people, to live in the local rural area they originate from. This is fundamentally wrong. The company in question, Orsted, would want to take a good look at itself. If it intends to become a feature of the rural Irish landscape providing renewable energy, it needs to understand that it has to coexist with families in the area. We cannot have one without the other. Families will continue to exist. This did not occur in my constituency of Clare but it is something we are seriously concerned about as the company tees up other projects in the west.

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