Mr. Mark Griffin:

I welcome the opportunity to deal with a non-controversial issue. There have been guidelines in place since 2006. A consultation process was initiated by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government over two and a half years ago, to which more than 7,500 organisations and members of the public responded. Deputy John Deasy raised the issue of wind energy. It is interesting to note that the consultation process on the guidelines touched on issues such as noise, proximity and shadow flicker. On the issue of noise, there is subtlety in that the guidelines refer to proximity and setback as a noise control mechanism only. They provide that because of the lack of a correlation between separation distance and wind turbine sound levels. The use of a defined setback distance of turbines from noise sensitive properties to control noise impacts is not considered appropriate.