Mr. Daryl Kennedy:

A number of questions were asked by Deputies Penrose, Naughten and Catherine Murphy on environmental impact assessments, EIAs, and how they would take place. It is important to point out that we have had significant challenges just trying to unravel what is supposed to happen, as dictated by the 1985 directive on EIAs. It is apparent even talking to senior planners in the local council that there is confusion in terms of what needs to be done. It now seems quite clear that the EIA directive would say that the environmental impact statement, EIS, which is produced by the developer as part of the planning application is then subject to an environmental impact assessment, not just the EIS but also that the competent planning authority would tackle all of the direct and indirect effects of the development on the environment. The 2006 guidelines cover landscape and some of the elements but it does not cover the impact on material assets. That is required under Article 3 of the EIA directive. It also does not examine the impact on humans.

In response to Deputy Penrose’s question on how it would happen on the ground, one would expect that the developer’s contract body would identify sensitive receptors within a certain distance of wind farms and that they would assess the current base level of health of those sensitive receptors. I will defer to Mr. Andrew Duncan from an auctioneer’s perspective but in terms of material assets one could perhaps look at the Revenue’s database for the current value of the material assets in an area and consider the impact on a radius of between 1 km and 2 km. One could get a baseline reading and look at the impact on material assets. What we are seeing at the moment is that when one looks at any token implementation of the EIA directive it is really birds and bats that are getting a better look in than humans. That is the clear context at the moment. Is the committee aware of a single example of where an EIS has looked at the night time noise guideline, for example, of 43 decibels and how that impacts on homes in the region proximate to a developed wind farm. I am not aware of any, but neither am I in a position to be. It is clear from the case in March 2011 in the European Court of Justice that there is a lack of formal implementation of the EIA directive. The directive is now in place but there are some weaknesses. Currently, we do not see an open and transparent mechanism for the impact on material assets, humans and flora and fauna and the interaction of those effects and how they can all be taken together. That does not fill us with confidence in the planning system because we cannot see that type of analysis being done.