John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Griffin and his officials here today. I will not take too long but I have a couple of issues I wish to raise with him. I will start with something far less controversial than procurement, namely, wind turbines. That was a joke.

I gave notification through the clerk that I would be raising this issue. I do not expect the Secretary General to get into policy and I will not ask him to do that. From my standpoint there is an element of suspended decision making when it comes to this entire area within Government. That has been written about and well reported in the media. Because we are at the end of an Administration it is extremely important that we know what direction the Department and the senior officials in it may be taking with what was possibly described by the Minister as the balance between local concerns and renewable energy around the country. What I wish to focus on specifically is something I have dealt with in my constituency of Waterford and people I know very well, namely, noise and sleep deprivation as a result of wind turbines.

The differences within government in this regard have been well flagged. The decision-making process on the draft guidelines prepared two years ago has been suspended. As far as residents are concerned, there are differences of opinion about setback distances. There are also concerns about noise, but they are not addressed in the guidelines and that worries me.

Outside the setback discussion taking place, should we be talking more about the noise than the setback distance issue? I understand that, even for people whose homes are well over 1 km away from a turbine, noise is still an issue and resulting in sleep deprivation. If one accepts that adequate sleep is a prerequisite for good health, particularly that of children, perhaps there has not been enough discussion of the noise issue. Perhaps Mr. Griffin might set out the Department's direction in this regard, particularly in the light of the fact that the process, in terms of publication of guidelines, has been suspended for the past couple of years. He might also comment on whether he accepts the premise that we need to seriously consider some of the issues the citizenry has raised.