Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

My next point also relates to airports. AirNav Ireland and the Shannon Airport Group, the management group, have both flagged major concerns about wind farm development in County Clare, east Clare in particular, on the final approach to the Shannon Airport runway. They have said it simply poses a risk to the Woodcock Hill radar station, which is in my parish. I have farmland right up to the edge of that radar station. However, it is more than just a local piece of infrastructure. I think 90% of air traffic coming across Irish skies each morning into continental Europe passes over Woodcock Hill. It is a national asset. The Irish Aviation Authority, AirNav and the Shannon Airport Group have said this poses a risk to the functioning of that facility, yet we see application after application for wind farms, some of them pending and so on, so we have to be careful in what we say. This is important because the Minister's role transcends two Departments. The wind energy guidelines need updating, and that is a thing in its own right, but we need some policy that safeguards national aviation infrastructure from large competing infrastructure like wind turbines which may affect the operational capacity of those radars and compromise air safety, to use the words of the aviation authority.