Mr. John Reilly:

Deputy Cowen spoke about the revision of guidelines. It is necessary to revise guidelines for anything as time moves on. The interesting thing here is that we are currently erecting 28 3 MW turbines on cutaway peat land in County Offaly. That project was brought through the planning process in 2010. We conducted a very significant public consultation exercise as part of that. We got tremendous support from the local community. Of course the community had questions. These were the first large-scale wind projects to be developed in the midlands. The communities had questions and probed us in that regard. However, those wind farms received planning permission under the current guidelines.

The key issue communities want to understand is that noise will not emanate from them that will disturb their sleep or keep them awake at night. Setback distances sometimes get confused with the need to comply with very strict low night-time levels of noise. In this instance the noise limits with which that wind farm is required to comply are a couple of decibels lower than the noise limits with which the peat-fired power station just down the road must comply. There is a lack of consistency here. That peat-fired power station has been operating in the locality for 14 years. We have had a very small number of noise complaints operating at 43 decibels and 45 decibels at night. We do not believe operating a wind farm at roughly 43 decibels will cause any problem for local communities in terms of noise. In order to comply with those noise limits, the minimum setback distance on the project had to be in excess of 650 m. There are minimum setback distances and the reality is that in order to comply with the noise restrictions it will be necessary to set back these turbines considerably further from housing.

Mr. D'Arcy said we are also constructing a farm that straddles three counties in the south, Laois, Kilkenny and Tipperary. We had to submit three separate planning applications to the local authorities because at the time the planning guidelines were such that the planning application for that size of farm was submitted directly to the local authority. We had three different interpretations of elements of the guidelines.

Referring to Mr. Cowhig's point, there is no doubt that the review and tightening up of guidelines is always welcome. In developing any of these activities Bord na Móna will not be - nor ever has been - in the business of disturbing or trampling on local communities. We want to work with local communities and we will only propose to locate wind turbines - in this project or in any project we develop across our land holdings - where it is deemed appropriate to do so.

I believe it is entirely appropriate for the local authorities to designate areas for wind energy. That assessment can be looked at, and local authorities and communities can decide where it might be deemed appropriate to locate these, which would help everybody.

Deputy Cowen asked about having an independent economic review of wind energy. In a way it is a pity this does not happen because some of the facts relating to the economics of wind energy are clear to see. For example, in the wholesale electricity market today, the average wholesale price of electricity coming from the mix of fuels we have, gas, peat, coal and renewables, last year was €90 per MWh - €90 per unit of production. Today, the new wind farms under the REFIT support scheme are receiving €70 per MWh. In our view the economics of wind energy are clear to be seen. If somebody wanted to conduct an independent analysis, it might put to bed the debate on pricing.

On CO2 emissions reductions, in 2006 the electricity sector was responsible for the production of 15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions to meet a demand of 27 TWh. Unfortunately, owing to the economic recession in 2012, demand fell back to the 2006 levels. The provisional figures for CO2 emissions recently published by the EPA indicate that emissions in the electricity sector fell to 12.1 million tonnes. Wind energy has had a major contribution to make to the abatement of significant CO2 emissions in a cost-effective manner.