Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the statement supplied to us by the delegation. What is a reasonable set-back distance?

We have the guidelines which specify a maximum of 500. The plan is that County Laois, where I live, and County Offaly will be populated with these turbines very quickly and local people are very concerned about this. What does the panel consider is a reasonable set-back? I am also concerned that a few decades from now, or perhaps even sooner, we could have a lot of rusty turbines on the landscape but doing nothing. What is the panel's view of the need to put a bond in place in order to ensure funding will be available to remove such turbines, where necessary, if they become uneconomical? That may not happen, but we cannot say for sure.

What is the panel's view on the question of guidelines versus regulations? There is a feeling abroad that guidelines can be stretched and pulled like an elastic band to fit whatever case one wants to make. A lot of people in County Laois believe the terms and conditions need to be set out in black and white. I have suggested all parties and Independents in the Oireachtas sign up to a moratorium on further development until we have a proper regime in place, which would only take a few months. In the meantime, no further planning applications should be accepted. We must make sure we do not make the same mistakes that we made with the construction madness in the first decade of this century. What is the panel's view? Would it support the adoption of such an all-party approach?