Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Senator Ó Clochartaigh on the work he has done on this important issue prior to its coming before the committee. I appreciate the serious circumstances in which up to 80 families find themselves. My heart is with them. At the end of the day the planning process is in place. If the wind farm company went through the process and did everything properly, I am absolutely amazed as to how the local community was unaware such an application was going through their local authority. I would question openly where the local county councillors to whom those 80 families entrusted their local business were, and why they did not organise public meetings to address the concerns of the local community. Surely to God every county councillor, across the party political divide, on the local authority knew the application was going through. I know from my time as a member of a local authority, that if a developer was within a smell of making an application for a wind farm the local community would be notified not by the wind farm company but by the people representing the local community. That is what I would say in this case.

With regard to public consultation, it is as clear as a pikestaff that there is no onus on anybody to put leaflets through a door informing people in a locality that they are about to engage in the planning process. The documentation in front of me does not state that people have to do so.

Even when it comes to stating that it is strongly recommended that the developer of wind farm energy projects should engage in active consultation and dialogue with the local community at an early stage in the planning process, ideally prior to submitting a planning application, it states it is not mandatory but it is strongly recommended. I am not defending the wind farm company but what I am trying to say is that it did what it had to do to get its planning.

It is most unfortunate that the local people were debarred from submitting an observation which would have allowed them to make an appeal to An Bord Pleanála after the planning permission being granted, but they were denied all of that because they did not know that it was going on. It is unbelievable and crazy to think the wind farm was being proposed, the planning notices went up, the advertisements went in the newspapers, nobody knew about it and all of the county councillors stayed quiet about it. It is amazing. I am shocked. However, it happened. I am afraid it is an impossible situation for these people. They will have to live with this.

In County Kerry, many years ago before wind farms became as predominant as they are now, I and another councillor introduced into the county development plan a rule with regard to a minimum distance at which a wind farm could be developed near local houses because we felt so strongly about the issue. Unfortunately, An Bord Pleanála used to overrule this. When the council would refuse on that ground, An Bord Pleanála would overturn that decision. That was most unfortunate. I always was very concerned. While I would believe in wind farm energy, and I think it is good, I would never want it to be imposed on a community or to devalue a person's house. Such an outcome is wrong. My question is where were the county councillors.