Ms Helena Fitzgerald:

I wanted to take a step back look at the whole Grid25 policy. That policy was developed by EirGrid, which is a private company, albeit wholly owned by the Minister. How can a private company develop government policy in this way? Government policy must reflect the interests of the people of Ireland. Ireland has some unique attributes compared to other countries, especially in the way we inhabit our rural landscape. Everybody knows that Ireland has a dispersed settlement pattern, that Irish people live in our landscape to a much greater extent than in other countries. Fundamentally, I feel that this has not been addressed in the Grid25 process. Under EU law, people who inhabit a landscape have rights to be involved when decisions are made about that landscape. That should have happened right at the inception of this process, but it did not happen.

There is a really serious question here about Ireland's commitment to these EU conventions on landscapes, and even the Aarhus Convention. How committed is the Government to implementing those? When we look at the timelines for the European Landscape Convention, we see that 11 and a half years after we ratified it, there is no national landscape policy. This goes beyond EirGrid, which has just been given a job to do. It is about the Government fulfilling its obligations under EU policy for the good of the people of Ireland. The whole issue needs to be reviewed from that standpoint. Government policy needs to reflect the needs of the people of Ireland.