Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I understand that. I will not ask the Taoiseach for details of the meetings.

On a recent visit to Brussels for a meeting, I took the opportunity to visit a massive wind farm halfway between Charleroi and Brussels, which has the largest wind turbines in the world. It is run by a company called Enercon, from northern Germany. Each of these turbines is about 400 ft. high. They cost €12 million apiece and are provided in a month. There are two permanent jobs associated with each tower, and the farmer on whose land the wind farm is situated gets €100,000 per year. Each one generates enough electricity to power 5,000 houses. In a county with 60,000 houses, a small number of these turbines could provide enough electricity to power all of them. Large stretches of the country could be powered in this fashion.

The targets set by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources will never be reached because we do not have community buy-in, and the planning structure makes things difficult with objections and so on. In County Clare, the county manager and councillors of all parties and none agreed on a material contravention of the county development plan after designating various areas of the county as having high, medium, low or zero potential for wind energy. In terms of its equivalent in oil, there is a Saudi Arabia blowing up and down the west coast every day. When one considers the statistics and the economics of it, one sees massive opportunities in terms of job creation. Many of the materials required for such facilities could be manufactured in this country - concrete, metal, plastics, environmentally benign coatings and so on. Jobs would be provided for architects, engineers and tradesmen.

I do not know whether the Cabinet sub-committee has examined the urgency of dealing with this, but if we are serious about the targets the Government has set for itself in terms of wind energy, we are far behind. We would need to provide one of the turbines I mentioned every three or four days until the deadline to meet our stated objective. An effort should be made to gain acceptance of such projects among communities. The Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security, chaired by Deputy Barrett, voted in favour of the revised EU Commission decision to allocate billions of euro to renewable energy and carbon capture projects across the EU.

We do not have to start disrupting special areas of conservation, national heritage areas or areas of environmental sensitivity. As has happened in County Clare, an examination of State-owned and private lands that are not zoned would find adequate space for major wind energy projects. When the next meeting of the Cabinet sub-committee takes place, I suggest the Taoiseach seek a report on the potential that exists. We should be driven by a sense of urgency. There would be thousands of jobs for people all over the country if we could get the structure right and ensure acceptance by communities, with a real drive by Government to start the manufacturing process. In this way we can meet the targets set by Government for energy production.

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